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Films by ex-street children in Argentina, from the Working with Words Project
Essays on the Working with Words Project:
Working with Words
In films from the 1920s or 30s, we always saw street children as newspaper vendors, and in some parts of Latin America, that’s still true today. Unfortunately, selling words doesn’t always give a kid the tools he or she needs to read, write, and make a way in the world.
La Luciérnaga (The Firefly), a tremendously creative organization in Argentina, works to address exactly this problem. Faced with thousands of children working on the streets of the city of Córdoba, a group of committed journalists resolved to use their skills on behalf of these kids – today, working children in Córdoba write, edit, design, and publish a 50 page magazine every month, then sell their work on the street. Not only do these sales provide an important source of income to the young men and women who sell them (as well as their families), working with words has changed their lives. Today, once illiterate street kids write powerful articles about their lives on the street, while others comment on international politics or the local arts scene. The kids also learn business management, economics, marketing… all of the skills that they need to make a future for themselves.
In 2006, Shine a Light collaborated with La Luciérnaga to document their work in videos, interviews, and magazines, so that other organizations can use this knowledge to improve their efforts on literacy and economic development. We think it is among the most powerful of our projects.
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