The LiveWire Charge Up! 2010 Conference was literally as what the title is, Charged Up! After being a photographer professionally for the past 1.5 years, Charge Up! 2010 is actually my first photography conference/workshop I’ve attended. And to have an all-star list of professional photographers like Jenny Sun, Louis Pang, Grace Tan, Ke Wynn, Ian Chong, Arden Khoo, Olivia Oon, and not forgetting my good buddy Ian Salang, as your guest speaker and coach… *speechless* it’s just too overwhelming for a first timer in a photography workshop..
What I love most about this conference is that it gave me an opportunity to not only get to know these photographers as professional individuals, but to see and hear their stories of their struggles and hardship like what normal individual go through in their everyday life.

Every year in Charge Up!, each group in the photography stream will be given a project, which is based on a word or a title. As for this year’s project, each team is assigned to assist an NGO in making a picture montage for an ongoing activity or campaign, to create an awareness to the public.

My group was assigned to assist World Vision Malaysia in creating an awareness in regards to urban poverty. We were sent out to Old Klang road to interview and to document the families who are living in this unfortunate condition. The moment we entered the first house, I couldn’t hold my tears. To see that such condition still exist in big cities, I just wonder to myself what have we done to help these people so far. To learn more of what World Vision is doing to erode this problem, you can visit their website here. And if you want to make a donation to assist and be part of the solution, click here.

Here are some shots of the families that we visited.

the contrast is obvious

This is Nadaragan, he suffered a stroke attack in 2004 and he lost his ability to walk and to speak.

The only way he could express what is in his heart is by hand signals. Often he would just cry it out.

These two boys are the Praveen brothers. Their mother suffers from kidney failure and she had to stop going to the hospital for treatment because they couldn’t afford to pay. Their father is always away from home, either working somewhere else or just simply away.

Maligham has been paralyzed since 19 years old. He and his wife depend on food donation from neighbors. They can’t remember the last time their son visited them as he has his own family to support.

Amidst all the troubles and hardship that they are going through, I was really touched to see that they still can put on a beautiful smile, especially the children, letting us know that they are going strong.

So, how are you going to play your role in giving them hope?
Think about it..