The My World Project

Our plan

National Geographic contract photographer Mike Hettwer wanted to get involved with 826CHI (Chicago) by creating a photography workshop to inspire students to capture the stories of their own lives. Ultimately the photos would be used to make a book of photography with student images and accompanying captions, stories and short essays. Mike Hettwer has attended the TED conference every year for the past 10 years, and at last year’s conference, he learned about 826. After being completely blown away by all of the innovative 826 programs, he decided he just had to get involved. He wanted to design a photography workshop for middle and high school students, teaching them basic principles of photography and, finally, helping them compile images for a student book.

What we did

After being very impressed by all of the innovative and successful 826 programs, he decided to get involved. They were happy to get him involved, and the collaboration began. Hettwer had several meetings with 826CHI and they set up a summer schedule, meeting about every week. Hettwer invested in ten cameras, and set aside some money for publishing. The workshop enrolled ten 7th-11th graders, coming from different public and private schools in the inner city of Chicago. The ages of the students were varied, though Hettwer went out of his way to mention the excellence and talent of even his youngest pupils, who had no trouble keeping up with the older ones. In all, there were 8 workshops over the course of this class, producing over 12,000 photographs (not all of them made it into the book, of course). Each week Hettwer compiled the best images, as well as student writings to go along with their photographs. He recruited a few well-known friends to help out with the project: The writing portion of the class was taught by, and content was edited by, NY Times best-selling author Wendy Goldman-Rohm and instructional designer Maria Barella. Photographer Alex Garcia, who shared a Pulitzer-Prize at the Chicago Tribune, helped edit the photography. Each week, Hettwer published a new version of the book, entitled "My World Project," using the fast book publisher blurb.com. After the final book was published, there was a gallery opening that featured the student's photography at the Elegant Mister Gallery, just down the street from 826.