When 14-year-old Jeffrey Hafner Endler snapped a photograph of a girl in Tanzania this past summer, he didn’t think twice about it. It was another shot to add to his collection. But when he returned to New York from his 10-day trip and uploaded his photos, that particular one stood out.
“I thought it summed up a lot of the trip in general. This girl really did represent all of the kids there,” said Endler, a freshman at Shaker High School. “They’re a lot like the kids here. They like to have fun, enjoy learning. It’s just a lot harder to do the same stuff that we get to do here.”
Endler decided to submit the photograph to the National Geographic Kids International Photo Contest, for which aspiring photographers aged 6 to 14 are eligible. This past December, he was awarded first place in the “People” category in the U.S. division of the contest.
The winning picture narrows in on the unidentified girl, who is slightly covering her smiling mouth and staring candidly into the camera. Endler took it while on a trip with his mother, other adults and nine other students from Woodland Hill Montessori School to visit WHMS’s sister school, the Sinai Primary School, in Babati, Tanzania in August 2012.
“I think that girl was just walking around in between the building of the school, and, like all the other kids, wanted her photo taken. I took her picture and showed it to her immediately. They just really liked to see photos of themselves,” Endler said.
The trip was organized by Karen Cavanagh and John Mason of Water Power Peace, a project formed in 2008 with a goal to bring safe drinking water to Babati. The project began when WHMS teachers as well as scientists of Sabre Technical Services and engineers went to the Sinai School and designed a playground to generate electricity for the school.
Several other groups have gone on the trip before, but this year was particularly unique because the students had been pen pals with Babati students their age for almost three years and were finally able to meet their long-distance friends.
Over the course of the trip, the WHMS students worked on several projects with the Sinai School, including teaching various subjects like art and spelling in English. The WHMS students gave the Sinai students 50 English words to learn for a spelling bee, and the WHMS students learned the same words in Swahili. They also brought more thank 300 books to form a library, as well as computers to set up a lab, which, according to Cavangh, was the first time the Sinai students had seen computers.
Documenting the journey through photography has always been an integral part of the trip, and professional photographer Chris Martin of Water Power Peace often snaps the photos. This year, he put Endler and his mother, Lise, in charge of taking most of the photos, which helped Endler take his award-winning shot.
“We’ve used photography as a teaching tool to communicate what life is like there,” Cavanagh said.
For the trip, Endler used a Nikon D3000, a camera borrowed from his grandmother. Along with his first place prize, he won a Canon Powershot camera and a copy of several National Geographic books. His photo, along with the other winners, will appear in the May 2013 National Geographic Kids Magazine.
“Both my husband and I are incredibly proud,” Lise Endler said. “How wonderful to see your child inspired through photography, but also by the realization of what the rest of the world and how lucky he is with what he has.”