What is Photovoice?
Photovoice is a creative arts-based participatory process that puts cameras in the hands of individuals to enable them to share their experiences, perspectives, and stories of volunteerism and service through the use of photography, discussion, and collective action. Throughout our PhotoVoice process, AmeriCorps Seniors and AmeriCorps volunteers use photography to identify, discuss, and represent their community and share their experiences.
Benefits of Photovoice:
- Receive a creative volunteer perspective on their service, motivations to volunteer and how to improve AmeriCorps Seniors programming, etc.
- Receive photos and narratives from volunteers to use in promotional and program materials
Our Photovoice Process:
- Outreach and recruitment of AmeriCorps Seniors and AmeriCorps State and National volunteers
- Each project takes place over 4-6 sessions, which includes group discussions, training, photo-sharing and the development and presentation of either an individual and/or group photography project.
- All Participants receive digital cameras, a stipend, and training on PhotoVoice, photography skills, and ethics.
Feedback from previous Photovoice participants:
"This program gave me the opportunity to share my experience with what I do and have learned being a foster grandparent." - Foster Grandparent in Richmond, Virginia
About this toolkit:
The Community Service Photovoice Toolkit is now available.
This Photovoice Toolkit provides practical guidance for volunteers, community organizations, and facilitators to plan, launch, facilitate, and share a Photovoice project, from building your team and recruiting participants to conducting sessions, and sharing your project. The guidance in this toolkit was informed and shaped by 6 Photovoice demonstrations, both in person and virtually, representing the wide reach of AmeriCorps programs in Virginia.
Visit / Download the online toolkit for more information: https://sites.google.com/view/commserphotovoicetoolkit
This material is based upon work funded by the Office of Research and Evaluation at AmeriCorps under Grant No. 22REAVA002 through the National Service and Civic Engagement research grant competition. Opinions or points of view expressed in this document are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official position of, or a position that is endorsed by, AmeriCorps.
The Community Service Photovoice Toolkit is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-SA 4.0). The toolkit was authored by Theodora Biney-Amissah, Carlin Rafie, and Emily Zimmerman of Virginia Commonwealth University’s Center on Society and Health and Virginia Cooperative Extension at Virginia Tech.
A suggested citation for this work is as follows:
Biney-Amissah T, Rafie C, Zimmerman E. Community Service Photovoice Toolkit. Virginia Commonwealth University Center on Society and Health and Virginia Cooperative Extension at Virginia Tech. August 2026. https://sites.google.com/view/commserphotovoicetoolkit
Our Partners:
