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Tour leader sets sights on changing the world

Even on a trip to India designed to change the world, photographer Amanda Koster made room for the colorful and the sublime.

She led her idealistic tour group — a party of four — through the spice and bangle markets of Jaipur, through stalls of workers stringing marigolds for the temples. She gave them a day astride ungainly camels in rural Rajasthan and a night under glittering desert stars.

But it was at the Vatsalya orphanage, a haven for India’s street urchins, that Koster’s group members found the spiritual heart of their foray into social-justice tourism.

“You drive in, and the kids run up and hug you and call you ‘didi,’ which means older sister,” said Danielle Williams, who was 23 during last fall’s tour and had never visited a developing country. “It’s not a sad place like you’d expect.”

Project launches

Williams, now research coordinator for the National Geographic Channel, was so moved she returned home to Washington to help create a project to assist India’s street children and AIDS orphans. The project, a collaboration with SHAII — the Stop HIV/AIDS in India Initiative — launched at the end of January.

That’s exactly the kind of change Koster hopes to inspire by opening travelers’ eyes to poverty, hardship and hope and sending them home to spread the word about our common humanity.

“Making that human connection makes all the difference,” said Koster, a Seattle-based freelance photographer.

Koster has photographed AIDS orphans in Kenya and chronicled the work of Doctors Without Borders in the slums of Brazil. She has celebrated the beauty of ordinary women’s bodies and helped preserve the songmaking traditions of Moroccan women in a show to be exhibited at the International Museum of Women in San Francisco and at the U.S. Embassy in Morocco.

Koster makes her living as a commercial photographer, shooting for publications such as Newsweek and Sunset and doing ad and corporate work.

“Salaam Garage” is the name she gives her personal projects, the award-winning photographic and video installations she creates to promote social justice and world peace.

Last fall’s India tour came about because Koster’s globe-trotting photo shoots were so compelling — and her own passionate idealism generates such a force field — that friends and acquaintances began asking, “Can I come, too?”

Doing something good

Recognizing the world-changing potential in their enthusiasm, Koster asked herself, “Why not harness that and turn it into something that does good?”

On a practical note, she said, “I was going to be in India anyway, shooting commercial stuff, so I thought I would create a tour and see what happened.”

Koster focused the trip on everyday Indian life, taking her party of four down side streets and back alleys where local people went about their workaday lives. In the countryside, they toured villages and farms by camel and shared chai with relatives of their driver and companion, Govind Singh.

Koster’s tour group has created a photo exhibition that highlights the work of the Vatsalya orphanage. There, children who have suffered sexual abuse, hard labor and other brutalities reclaim a sense of joy and belonging as they further their schooling and learn a trade, such as baking, sewing or woodworking.

The Vatsalya exhibition will run through February at a Seattle cafe and at other venues in the city throughout the spring. A portion of the proceeds from photograph sales will benefit Vatsalya, which also has permission to use the participants’ photos on its brochures and fundraising material.

The American travelers said the trip has indelibly altered their vision of the world, and their own sense of purpose.

“I sort of metaphorically got sat down on my butt,” said Linda Steen, 35, who hopes to trade her Seattle landscaping business for a career in a field that values social and environmental responsibility.

Steen is a dancer as well as a landscaper, and dance helped her connect with the children of Vatsalya. The children performed traditional dance for the Americans, then watched, bug-eyed, as Steen demonstrated ballet and modern dance.

Raising funds

Williams, the entourage’s youngest member, learned of the tour through the grapevine at National Geographic, where she was a part-time intern with limited job security and a very thin wallet.

To assist in paying for all of her expenses, she launched a fundraising campaign, telling donors of the trip’s educational and humanitarian aspects.

“I raised $3,000,” Williams said. “I raised all the money except for the plane ticket. I took a leap of faith.”

The faith paid off. Williams said the Indian Embassy in Washington wants to display her photos, and she’s thinking of becoming a professional documentary photographer like Koster.

Kindred spirits

Cynthia LaRowe, 40, director of global learning at Starbucks in Seattle, met Koster through a photography class and quickly recognized a kindred spirit.

LaRowe, who used to work overseas in the non-profit sector, caught the photography bug when she was in her 20s.

She remembers racing down a street in Indonesia, her 35 mm camera swinging from her neck, to capture images of an elaborate funeral procession winding through the streets.

India had long been in LaRowe’s sights, and she was eager to experience its friendly and intense street atmosphere.

“India is like this full-body, full-impact experience from the moment you hit the ground,” LaRowe said. “There are so many people, so much sensory input.”

LaRowe was especially inspired by Vatsalya founder Jaimala Gupta, whose non-governmental organization offers microloans for women’s start-up businesses and raises and educates 54 orphans on a yearly budget of $700 per child.

The fourth participant, Conrad Chavez, 41, is a self-employed tech writer for the software industry.

On the side, Chavez does fine-art photography. Some of his photos will be included in a book Vatsalya plans to publish about children in India.

Koster hopes the Vatsalya photo exhibit inspires viewers to launch their own global explorations.

“If even half of Americans would travel internationally, I feel like it would be a different world,” she said.

She plans to lead another tour to India in the fall, with future outings planned for Vietnam, Central America, Morocco and, if stability returns, Kenya.

For more information, see salaamgarage.com and amandakoster.com.