A look at typical life in a Maquiladora town on the U.S.-Mexico border from the perspective of 5th Grade Students

This arts and humanities project was conceived by David M. Freeman and Jonathan Searfoss and initially funded by a grant from the McAllen Arts Council.  It involved 5th grade school children at the Felipe Carillo Puerto primary school in the border city of Reynosa, Tamaulipas, Mexico.  With the assistance of Miriam Medel Garcia and Claudia Trujillo Hernández from the Consulado de México in McAllen, Texas, we provided training materials to these school children to show them how to take good photographs, which included a list of subjects that we wanted them to photograph. We then distributed 100 disposable cameras to the children and collected them 3 weeks later to be developed. Each student received a copy of the photos that they took with the camera. 

We sorted through over 2,000 photographs and made two rounds of selections to identify the 50 final photos you see on this website.  We brought in three honorary judges to help choose 1st, 2nd and 3rd place winners, as well as 2 honorable mentions. They were Kirk Clark, Tim Smith (from Newschannel 5) and Miriam Medel García.

Through the generous donations of Kirk Clark and First National Bank, we were able to complete the project and prepare the finalist's photos for a traveling exhibit.