The Triangle

Issue date: 12/5/08 Section: News

Media Credit: Emily Olsen

Mariana Chilton, an anthropologist and professor at Drexel University's School of Public Health, has created "Witness to Hunger," an exhibit featuring 40 female volunteers from the outreach portion of the Children's Sentinel Nutrition Assessment Program to tell their everyday stories.

The exhibit began when Chilton gave women digital cameras and asked to take pictures of their everyday lives.

"As an anthropologist, I believe that true wisdom and power lie with common people and emerge from their own experiences," Chilton said.

Chilton said she wanted to show the policy makers the circumstances in which these women and their children live.

"I felt that women who know the experience first-hand had to be a part of the national dialogue about hunger," she said.

Chilton said she hopes that this exhibit will encourage others to pay attention to the realities of hunger.

"We hope people learn to look beyond color, class, gender, and neighborhood to see each other as equals in the same human family. We want people to be outraged by child hunger and poverty," she said.

Chilton is a nationally recognized authority on hunger. She is also the principal investigator of the Philadelphia GROW Project, which she founded to improve children's growth and nutrition.

This exhibit is free and open to the public, with a preview exhibition Dec. 11 at 6:30 p.m. The exhibit is on view from Dec. 12-18, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Saturday and Sunday from noon to 6 p.m. The exhibit is located in the Bossone Research Enterprise Center.

Each woman who participated received a Cannon Powershot camera, as well as financial compensation up to $175.

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