Photography Empowers Marginalised Women for Self-Expression

Global Business Studies (GBS) alumna Bonnie Chiu shares with Hong Kong Economic Times about her social enterprise Lensational, hoping to bring more life-changing opportunities to marginalised women with photography.

During Chiu’s exchange studies in Istanbul, she met a girl who was a first-time camera user. Realising many things are not inevitable, she was inspired by this experience to start her social enterprise “Lensational”. After having won a start-up fund of USD1,500 (HKD11,600) in “Resolution Project: Social Venture Challenge”, she and her teammate co-founded the social enterprise in 2013.

Lensational is composed of “lens” and “sensation”, meaning one can express themselves through photography. Through collecting usedcameras, Lensational provides photography training to marginalised women and assists them in selling the photographs. Part of the profits will subsidise the women’s living, and the remaining will be used to sustain the operation of the social enterprise.

Having accumulated over millions of photographs globally so far, Lensational collaborates with Getty Images and about five small and medium-sized enterprises and non-government organisations. On top of selling photographs, they provide staff training, conduct research, and organise exhibitions for the organisations. The social enterprise also plans to develop partnerships with public relations agencies by extending the supply of photographs to their clients. The business has been expanded to Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh and 15 other countries.

Please click here (PDF) for more details in the original story written in Chinese and click the image below to read the article.

Source: Hong Kong Economic Times
Date published: 14 February, 2017