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Engaging All Ages
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| Photo:Alex Harris |
Alex Harris, a professor of the practice of public-policy studies
and a founder of the Center for Documentary Studies, has collaborated
for five years with Experience Corps, a national literacy project
that pairs senior-citizens tutors with children in urban schools
and after-school programs, to document the lives of older Americans
working to revitalize their communities. "Experience Corps
and the New Wave of Civic Engagement," an exhibit of Harris'
photos comprising nineteen color and black-and-white images shot
in 2000 and 2003 in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco,
and Portland, Oregon, was displayed in July in the Russell Senate
Office Building in Washington.
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| Photo:Alex
Harris |
"These photographs address a policy issue--the quality of public
elementary schools--and document a program that is improving these
schools," says Harris, who also drew upon his experience in
teaching a Duke public-policy seminar called "Reinventing Age." "My
hope is that people will see these photographs in Washington and
realize the potential of Experience Corps to make a difference in
particular schools and in the lives of individual children and adults,
but also, if expanded to other schools and cities, to affect the
life of the country."
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