Photographic Narrative of a Youth's Positive Development: A Sponsored Child's Journey to Social Work

The child outcomes of international child sponsorship programs can be traced longitudinally but not yet systematically recorded. This study uses a photographic narrative approach to document how an adult subject can recollect her childhood experience as a sponsored child in an Asian country and highlight her journey to becoming a successful social work professor in America. A series of genogram interviews helped document how a sponsorship program instilled hope to an Asian girl who grew up in a poor neighborhood. As Allen Feldman states, “The event is not what happens. The event is that which can be narrated” (p. 14). This presentation uses photos and videos to demonstrate how the subject uses narrated events to describe hardship and successes during an immigrant’s journey to end the cycle of poverty.

Three-Stage Approach

The first stage is story-telling using genogram information to reflect upon children’s healthy development in a refugee family during economic depression. Narrated stories describe basic survival skills and family cohesiveness. This family of nine experienced financial struggles and then a fire destroyed their home. Father worked three jobs and Mother was a nursemaid. The family ate rice at most meals without any other food; or, they waited for the leftovers from a neighbor. Since the age of four, the girl began attending school on the rooftop of a public housing compound. The school principal enrolled her and her siblings in a sponsor-a-child program. Back then, education was not compulsory and many children were child laborers. Her parents did not mind sharing their “parenting” with the anonymous sponsors to exchange for free education. 

The second stage is photographic narration focusing on family resilience. Although the family did not have money to take photos, gathering historical photos of their neighborhood provides an opportunity for the subject to recall how the family utilized social resources and what social workers had done to outreach the children from a drug-inflicted environment. An example demonstrates how to use several photos of filthy communal bathrooms in their resettlement housing when recalling the family’s skills in building resilience. Because the parents valued education, their children completed elementary education with the help of sponsorship.  Looked through their eyes of recent family photos, the subject expressed that her parents were poor but not helpless. Despite the destitute situation, the parents never asked the government for welfare. They were so adamant that “welfare” was not a word that was even mentioned at home.

The third stage is a disclosure journey designed by the subject to testify her lived experience. In this presentation, she will present the collected photographic materials to share how she came to America and became a social work professor of 29 years specializing in child welfare practice and research.

As the authors witness how this journey has affected their view about utilizing narrative findings from childhood stories to address intervention outcomes, audience can discuss the use of this approach in teaching. Qualitative methodology presents abundant data, past and current, directly from clients to support intervention effectiveness.