IDEAS

 

The idea for the Through Her Eyes project  came out of my own experience as an athlete and reporter.  After graduating from Emory University I moved to Costa Rica to work at a weekly English language paper, The Tico Times. During my time in Costa Rica, I would peel through the local dailies every morning at work.  The number of times I flipped to the back sport pages of the Costa Rican dailies and found a story about female athletes was few and far between. I knew women were playing sports across the country, but their stories weren’t being told or covered by the media. After returning to the U.S., I began working at the Chicago bureau of the New York Times, where I also paid attention to the coverage of women and sports. Time and time again, I found myself thinking about women and sports and news coverage. I knew from my own experience that the benefits from sports extend beyond the field to all areas of life.  I became interested in the work that had been done to document the benefits women in developing countries gain from sports. I knew a great deal of research had been done about women in the United States and Western Europe. I began to research what had been written about women in sports in Latin America and I found that much still needed to be investigated regarding women in developing nations and what they gained from sports. I began to realize and understand the importance of role models, news reports, athletic icons and the people who surround the promotion of sports. As a high school player, my teammates and I, or the games we were playing, were profiled on a weekly basis in our local paper. We were always thrilled to see what had made the pages the week or night after a game.  I had grown up with iconic female sports figures telling me to Just Do It. And I really did believe that if I ran the sprints and hit the free throws, I could do it. It wasn’t until I was in a place where there was little to no coverage of female athletes that I realized the importance that the media and role models play in pushing women to play. And I decided I wanted to launch a project to change the face of women in sports.

 

WORK STAGES

 

Stage One: Conduct research and select country. Contact in country organizations that are working on women’s health or empowerment projects.  

Stage Two: Travel to designated country. Interview and photograph women and girls who are playing sports to find out what they are gaining from playing, why they play, how sport has affected their lives, what struggles the face and how they have overcome them.

Stage Three: Create an exhibit of the photographs with text panel components that highlight excerpts from the interviews conducted with the women. Edit a video component of the interviews to accompany the exhibit.

Stage Four: Present exhibit in country of focus and in the U.S.

Stage Five: Project becomes a permanent traveling exhibit in country of focus. By showing girls and women photographs and interviews of their peers playing sports and talking about the struggles they may have faced, we can inspire a new group of women to be involved in the game.

Stage Six: Team up with an established health clinic or women’s organization at each location where the exhibit is being shown to create an ongoing sports league.