Lives of Tongan girls to feature in new book [1]
Saturday, June 13, 2015 - 06:43
By Linny Folau
An American photojournalist Paola Gianturco (75) will feature stories of local girls under Tonga’s Talitha Project in her sixth photographic book, to be released in 2017, to celebrate girl activists from around the world.
Talitha Project is a young women’s development organization started in 2009 in Nuku‘alofa by Vanessa Heleta to provide social support, employment opportunities and workshops to single Mums and children aged 10- 25 years in Tonga.
Paola, whose photojournalistic work focuses on women around the world who have overcome difficult issues, has this week interviewed and photographed six of the girls under this program during her visit.
She said the book to be titled Wonder Girls is about girls who are making the world a better place. The book will feature girl activists aged 10-18 years old from 15 countries, including two countries from the South Pacific region (Tonga and New Zealand), Asia, Africa, North America and Latin America. All her books are philanthropic projects, for which she donates her royalties to carefully selected nonprofit organizations that relate to each book's content.
“I found Talitha project because it was suggested to me by the Global Fund for Women, the largest foundation that gives grants to projects around the world run by women and girls for them.”
She said the Global Fund also gave Talitha its first grant when it started and respected the work they do here in Tonga.
“Girls under this program in Tonga are doing important work, because violence against girls and women is an issue everywhere in the world. Here the girls have found a way to talk about it with each other, educate and help each other, which I think is very useful for girls everywhere.”
She is convinced it will take all of us working together to solve the problems that are faced by women and families everywhere.
"My dream and hope is that my books will help people understand each other.”
Age of child-bearing
Paola said the stories of the girls under the Talitha project would be in good company.
Other stories includes girls in Malawi aged 13 who have worked over the past five-years to convince their parliament to change the law about child marriage, because it was traditional there to marry off daughters when they were 9-10 years old to men aged 30-40 years old, she said.
Marriage at a young age had serious consequences because the girls could no longer go to school but had stay at home, and they became pregnant before their bodies were ready to have babies, so it was very unhealthy for them.
"These girls began advocating their parliamentarians to consider passing this piece of legislation against child marriage and last year that law passed, which is a huge accomplishment."
In New Zealand, Paola documented the largest group of high school girls in the Amnesty International Network working on women's and girl's human rights all over the world.
Wonder Girls will be published by Powerhouse Books in New York to be released on October 11, 2017 which is the United Nation's International Day of the Girl.
Paola said she does not gain any money from her books and the royalties go to the Non-Profit organisations that are working to help the issues in her books.
“For example with my Grandmother Power book the proceeds were given to grandmothers in Africa who were raising their grandchildren orphaned by AIDS. For this book the Global Fund for Women will get the benefit because it works to benefit girls around the world.”
The photojournalist, who had initially worked in business for 35-years was a lecturer at Stanford University in women’s leadership before pursuing her love for photojournalism, has documented women’s lives in 55 countries over the last 16 years.
Her latest and fifth award-winning book, Grandmother Power: A Global Phenomenon features 120 activist grandmothers in 15 countries on five continents who are fighting courageously and effectively – against poverty, disease, illiteracy, environmental degradation and human rights abuse – to create a better world for grandchildren everywhere.
Paola has been named by Women’s e-News as one of the Leaders for the 21st Century in 2014. Her work has been exhibited at the United Nations in New York, UNESCO in Paris and the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago among other venues.
She leaves Tonga today, to return to the United States.