Photographer works for empowerment

By Diane Huber | Lacey Today • Published April 02, 2008

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Rebekah-mae Bruns spent a year in Iraq as an Army photographer. She returned shaken and consumed with stopping war.

“When I came home, the devastation became so overwhelming that I became almost obsessive about preventing it,” she said from her Lacey residence.

Bruns, 36, saw a connection between war and a lack of education — particularly female education.

She enrolled in Saint Martin’s University’s Master of Education program. Then she took her photography background to a village in southern Tanzania and spent three months teaching 14 teenage girls photography and video skills.

The project — called The Rosetta Project — is part of her master’s thesis.

She also hopes it’s one small step toward making the world a more peaceful place.

From Iraq to Africa

Bruns joined the Army at age 20 and has 15 years of military service.

She served in the Sinai Peninsula in Operation Enduring Freedom in 2003 and spent a year from 2004 to 2005 in Baghdad and Fallujah, Iraq.

When she returned, she didn’t want to pick up her camera, because she associated it with her time in Iraq.

At the same time, she felt that pull to create something meaningful from her experience.

“When you go through traumatic events, you can choose one of two options: You can become bitter and angry and resentful, or you can take those experiences and learn from them and apply them to something positive,” she said.

Her research led her to sub-Saharan Africa.

The region has among the lowest education rates for women and the highest rates of war, she said.

Less than 20 percent of students continue to secondary school, according to UNICEF, an organization within the United Nations that advocates for children’s rights worldwide.

The cost for one student to attend secondary school for a year is about $200, Bruns said.

About this time, a Tanzanian nun at Saint Martin’s invited Bruns to teach in a secondary school for girls ages 12 to 22.

So Bruns set about fundraising for her trip, collecting donations from Lacey Rotary and several local churches. People donated cameras, laptops and other equipment for the project.