success

It’s such a relative term.

These days I am working on a project for the largest provider of day care in Missouri catering to those living in poverty. It’s a special place called Operation Breakthrough. Over six hundred kids burst through its doors every morning eager to take advantage of opportunities to develop to their fullest potential in a safe, loving and educational environment. Operation Breakthrough also strives to support and empower the children’s families through advocacy, referral services and emergency aid. Most of these children have only one parent, many are homeless. Countless come from a world filled with addiction, abuse, and violent death. Operation Breakthrough grants them their best shot at survival and success.

Our goal with this photographic project is to highlight some of the success stories.

This includes a four-year girl who is anorexic. She choked as an infant and developed a fear of eating. Now she’s beginning to eat and thrive, just like a four year old is supposed to do.

This includes a little girl who began life living with her mother in an abandoned building. They lived there for the first couple of years of her life. She was kept in an infant seat and was not walking even at the age of eighteen months. Now she’s running all over the place.

This also includes a young woman who has just begun her freshman year in college. She witnessed the murder of her sister by her mother’s boyfriend when she was just six years old. Her brother was gunned down while walking home from school just two years ago. She was given over to foster care at a young age; she was taken in by a few saints along the way. This optimistic and bright young woman knows the hallways of Operation Breakthrough like the back of her hand. She is now attending freshman English class, studying Sociology and Psychology, eating burgers in the cafeteria with friends and aspiring to become a nurse.

Featured also in the project is a little boy who suffers from microcephaly. His teenage mom can’t possibly hold him all day or deal with his constant fretting and crying. He probably shouldn’t have made it this far, but at one year old, this cutie is also considered a success.

As I said, it’s all relative.

For me, it’s a project that is both heart breaking and downright uplifting.