THROWBACK THURSDAY #4 PICTURE THIS

For this week’s throwback thursday, we will be throwing it back to a trip Eddo, Shawn and our video guy Julian made to Lenana last year

As a supply intern, one of the distinct privileges I’ve had is getting access to the thousands of photos that Julian, Shawn, and Eddo have taken over the year and a half the supply has existed. 

Every Picture, A Thousand Words

There are so many pictures of the kids there, different angles of different smiles. Eddo posturing to hold the kids in the best light, Shawn looking crazy cool posing next to John and the boys, and then, once in a while, I come across a picture like the one above. It leaves me speechless, wind completely knocked out. You just see the candid eyes of a child. Hopeful but tired.

Within the shot and the focus itself is the checked-shirt his mother worked and saved to get him. In this case like so many others in DYC, a shirt is a label that he is a child who is cared for, a child with a name and an identity, a child with a mother who will search for him if ever he was kidnapped or lost. The shirt is a message to those who might harm him. He is cared for. He is loved.

Grasping that pencil shard, every word he writes takes him to the future of our secondary school and to the future of Lenana. The future of the boy in the checked shirt with hopeful eyes. The boy who was loved.

Throw it back.

Have a Hopeful Thursday,

the Supply Interns