Shining a Light on successful social change.

At Shine a Light, we know that real change happens when marginalized people take power into their own hands. That’s why the Civil Rights movement worked, why businesses can no longer force children to work in factories, and why people can now marry and be friends with whom they choose. As we work with children and families from the favelas and from indigenous and poor rural communities, they not only communicate their ideas through film and art: they also begin to imagine themselves in a new way. They aren’t just victims, just invisible: they’re filmmakers, artists, musicians, dancers, and protagonists on the world’s stage.

A young man in a white tank top and baseball cap is standing outdoors during twilight, while two people beside him are taking photographs.

Thirty years of hope and change

Who really knows how to protect the jungle where they live? Who truly understand the challenges of life in urban shantytowns? At Shine a Light, we’ve shown that the real experts on social justice don’t work in universities or government offices, but in favelas, quilombos, and indigenous communities all over Latin America.

Shine a Light doesn’t have a single solution to the injustices of the world: instead, we work with local people to make films, music, and art, so that they can share their ideas.

When you scroll through your social media feed or read the news, it’s easy to despair. Poor and excluded people in Latin America have felt that all their lives, and yet they continue struggling for a better world. Maybe it’s time to learn from them!

Over the last two and a half decades, we have also financed dozens of small-scale projects to improve the lives and health of marginalized children. See them here.

A long history of projects

CanalCanoa

Documenting the effective, time-tested techniques of childhood education and health care of indigenous and traditional communities in the Amazon.

Two children, a boy and a girl, sit facing each other. The girl is looking through a camera at the boy in a amazonian setting with wooden walls.

FavelaNews

Young journalists from the favelas in the north of Recife, Brazil, tell stories about the beauty, strength, and flavor of their communities.

Children playing soccer on a cobblestone street, with one boy kicking a soccer ball and others waiting in line behind him.

Digital Aymara

In Search of Life is a telenovela written, filmed, and acted by indigenous teenagers living in the city of El Alto, a shantytown above La Paz

A person with short, dark hair and a black jacket films a woman with long dark hair and a red hoodie on a quiet sidewalk in a residential area of Bolivia during sunset.

1925 Kuna

Kuna children who live on the islands of Kuna Yala document the myths, history, and art of their people on film.

A young boy wearing an orange shirt and a white cap taking a photograph of an elderly woman with a red headscarf and colorful traditional Kuna clothing, sitting at a wooden table in a rustic setting.

Mediando Mundos

Mediando Mundos shows the way that children learn in the favela, through play, creativity and the arts.

A girl taking a photograph of a boy near a small building on a grassy hillside in Colombia.

Child Soldiers

We developed a new method of working with child soldiers who manage to escape the Colombian civil war: fictional film based on their lived experience.

The Sáliba

Sáliba children from three different communities documented the knowledge and practices of their culture in fascinating and profound films.

A group of people gathered around examining and documenting something on the ground, including an elderly man with a large hat, a woman holding a camera, and a young girl, outdoors in a sunny, rural setting.
A person standing on a stone staircase, holding a bicycle with one foot on a higher step and the other on a lower step. The person is wearing dark clothing and a backpack, and the scene is outdoors with sunlight and shadows casting on the stone wall and stairs.

Working Words

How can a magazine written and sold by working children transform their lives?

Stalel Stuk

Lessons for popular education with indigenous kids from the cities and jungles of Chiapas