Humans of the Aga Khan Academy

With the intention of creating connections between the members of the Aga Khan Academy community, 22 grade 8 students were challenged to design and develop a project that served and represented human diversity. They chose to create a photojournalism exhibition. 

 

This student-led project, guided by Teacher Preparation Programme intern Afeera Maryam and design faculty Michelle Massaro, inspired by Brandon Stanton’s popular social media site, “Humans of New York”, invited people to share a part of themselves, their ideas, challenges, a story or just a moment of their day with the goal of showing diversity and fostering empathy. To develop their version, students needed to take on many roles including journalist, photographer, translator, editor & event manager. They conducted interviews and voice recorded conversations with a wide scope of “humans” at the academy, including faculty, support staff, hospitality, maintenance, student athletes, artists and academics. They transcribed an excerpt from each of the recordings to be displayed along with a candid photo they snapped of the person interviewed. They captured over 100 different people, eventually selecting 70 to be part of their end product. 

 

The connections that the students made and shared with the school community was extended to visiting Aga Khan Academy network leadership and parents on October 5-6th at their “Humans of the Aga Khan Academy Exhibition”. The display was truly a unique showcase that very visibly celebrated the diversity of some very vibrant people. The photographs, stories, project documentation and beautiful décor, arranged by the grade 8s with guidance from their two teachers received a tremendously positive response from the hundreds of people who visited over the course of the two-day exhibition.

 

While the grade 8A students have not yet gained the audience of 20 million of Stanton’s original, their exhibition was one that will be connecting across the globe to a school in St. Thomas, Ontario, Canada. In order to do this, the process was documented and through a connection with Ms. Massaro, the students invited a class of Canadian secondary school students to take part in their own version of the project and both groups will be sharing their experience through a Skype call in November 2017. This opportunity furthers the original intent of this project which was to create connections between people, foster understanding and spark conversation. 

 

Reflecting on the process, students found that this project helped them become more confident in conversing with new people and much more empathetic to others. When asked what skills they saw grow through the course of this project the consensus was “patience, organization and understanding”.  The grade 8s went on to express this in their video submission they submitted to the “Design for Change school challenge” where they have shared their exhibition story and the voices from the Academy in Hyderabad with the world!