Eight years ago, Fatima Najm decided to use the skills she honed in newsrooms and on field assignments around the world to alleviate poverty and suffering in the most remote corners of the globe. Four years later, Creatives Against Poverty (CAP) was born. CAP is a Trust partner.
After crisscrossing continents galvanising friends, editors and colleagues to join the cause, Fatima co-founded Creatives Against Poverty with film-maker Namrata Tanna. CAP was established to pool and donate skills for social impact; to demonstrate that philanthropy is not the preserve of the privileged; and to say ‘if you have a skill, we can use it to bolster projects we support and monitor’.
While Fatima harnesses the positive forces of photography and news gathering skills to help grassroots NGOs– including Trust charities– to tell stories of struggles and successes; other CAP members are employing their own unique skills to address poverty. A CAP designer could be tutoring women in a beach village on pattern cutting to help them market their product as bikini-coverups; while an entrepreneur could be mentoring the group on how to scale the sewing project’s business to making and selling uniforms for local schools.
Fatima and the team at Creatives Against Poverty (CAP) work hand in hand with the Trust to bring our work alive in South Asia and the UK. CAP’s images and stories are showcased on our website and in our publications.
“We are opening windows into the communities where the Trust is impacting lives, affording those who have the misfortune of having been born into poverty the dignity of telling their own stories in their own words,” says Fatima.
Fatima is passionate about documenting genocide reconciliation projects in Rwanda, covering the riots in Xinjiang, reporting on the illegal sale of coltan to fuel the conflict in Congo and other issues that tend to fall off the mainstream news radar after initial coverage.
“I also love charting out trips on maps, figuring out magical journeys that involve rickety rafts doubling as boats, bouncing in the back of pick-up trucks under clear skies with my backpack for cushioning, and trekking for days to meet courageous village leaders persevering against extremes odds,” says Fatima.
Tough moments: We present raw truth of the aftermath of a conflict or natural disaster to donors and supporters. We don’t want you to hear our voice or style - we want the masses to feel the full force of the suffering and courage of the people we work with. We want to amplify the voices of the marginalized, or give voice to the voiceless so we don’t want to edit or curate the images or words we gather in the field. Sometimes it’s a tough call, I know the impact of watching a mother forgo food so her child can eat - do we show you her collarbones to hint at the horror, or the heart-breaking images of her skin stretched taught over her bones with a cherub-cheeked child at her chest?
Uplifting moments: Walking among the wreckage of a flood-hit village called Khorabad, the challenge of moving from rescue to relief to rehabilitation felt impossible. Hundreds of children were succumbing to water-borne sicknesses like cholera at sinister speed. But CAP coordinators in Toronto, London, Karachi, Mumbai and Hong Kong came together to raise funds, gather tents, distribute food, and source water filters — stemming the spread of disease and providing clean water to 3,011 flood refugees within a month.
My role was to conduct a census, to assess needs and to report to donors on how these needs constantly evolve as aid of one kind floods in, and commodities of another kind become scarce in an aid economy. Because we were in the field every day, when the floodwaters first hit, we were able to create a system for effective delivery of aid to the villages that were worst affected. We were able to ensure bags of food, blankets and tents went directly to the refugees who needed it the most. We were able to partner with the Centre for Speech and Hearing’s flood project who continue our work in the field, so that we do not abandon the community when we eject.
Anywhere we go, we build local capacity and we support that volunteer community with every resource and skill we can draw on, so we have to be careful about choosing our projects. To walk with us through the streets of Khorabad, CAP’s flood village, visit here.
Uplifting moments: Having 200 children who were cowering in fear of rebel militias during Sri Lanka’s protracted civil war tell us how they are now dreaming of becoming doctors and lawyers because CAP Hong Kong leaders Neha Kumar and Rasitha Leelasena raised the funds to support them with quality education.
In this picture our co-founder Namrata and I are listening to mothers relate acts of unbelievable courage as they sheltered in jungles surrounding Arugam Bay to save their children and husbands from being kidnapped by men with guns. We were there because Namrata is making a film to celebrate their everyday acts of heroism. I will support the project with photo essays and news feature stories. Our role here was to conduct and deliver an impact assessment peppered with recommendations for our continuing work with the Tsunami-ravaged, conflict-riven community.
To see our Sri Lanka project, visit here.
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