A community aid project by the Lomographic Society in cooperation with the international aid organisation Light for the World (based in Vienna, Austria)
A major international Lomographic campaign to raise donations to pay for eye surgery in Kikuyu, Kenya
A beautiful Lomographic book for everybody who donates 30 or 15 Euro/USD
An international Lomographic online photo competition. Subjects: EYES & ONE SHOT.

www.lomography.com/kikuyu
www.lomography.com/go/?where=shop&pro=eye

The pleasure of restless ramblings, a fast eye for everyday details, the untamed never-wanting-to-end joy in colours and shapes – this is the stuff of Lomographers' dreams, the raw material with which they work. What looks like a cultural elixir of life for the snapshot-loving community of photography nuts spread all around the world is in truth no more than the daily bread for that strongest, most dominant, most vital of all our sensual organs, the eye! Not just to give people pleasure, but quite simply as a matter of survival, especially in the impoverished regions of the world. Without eyesight there's no light, and the consequences are often pretty radical and can prove dire for more than just the afflicted!

But back to cultural content: the reverse applies – no eyesight, no joy in seeing and looking – and for the snapshot-enamoured, no joy in Lomography! All that we Lomographers want to achieve with the LomoKikuyu action is to give (pleasure in) life by restoring people's eyesight or helping them to see. With a donation of 30 Euros you don't only restore somebody’s eyesight in a poor region of the world, you also restore their most significant source of pleasure in life. So clear and simple is our thoroughly Lomographic thinking. And this is how simple and cheap it is to help: 30 Euros for somebody's eyesight, the price of a meal out, a book or a T-shirt. And it gets even better, everybody who donates is given a present themselves. They receive a chunky Lomographic book with images and text describing life at the Kikuyu Eye Hospital in Kenya. This is a magnificent volume with over 1000 Lomographs, and it won't leave a dry eye left in the house.

And this is exactly how LomoKikuyu works:

1. Every Lomographer and their friends and acquaintances the world over is being appealed to via the Lomographic Society website (www.lomography.com/kikuyu) to donate 30 Euros or 30 American dollars and so save somebody's eyesight. This is roughly how much it costs our internationally active partner organisation Light for the World (www.light-for-the-world.org) to carry out cataract surgery, for example at Kikuyu in Kenya, to restore the eyesight of somebody who has gone blind. We immediately pass on the full 100% of all donations to Light for the World, and in the bat of an eyelid it'll be being used to finance an operation in Kenya so a person can see (again). And even more concrete: the first 10,000 Euros donated to LomoKikuyu are being used for a flying mission to the north of Kenya in Autumn 2006 to complete a planned 350 surgical operations on eyes. More concrete projects are to follow, and are published with updates every day at www.lomography.com/kikuyu.
    
2. If you make a donation of Euro/USD 30 (schoolchildren and students only need to donate half as much), you will receive a wonderful 144 page Lomographic book crammed with images and a comprehensive description of the work being done at the Kikuyu Eye Hospital in Kenya, along with approx. 1000 excellent Lomographs taken by Lomographers and staff at the Kikuyu Eye Hospital taken from the hip. The images were shot in the clinic, in the operating theatre, in the glasses workshop at the Kikuyu Eye Hospital, as well as in the slums of Nairobi, the Masai plains on Kilimanjaro, and in a refugee camp on the border to Somalia. The Lomographs in the book show almost exactly what somebody who had been blind first sees after surgery: the colours, shapes and rhythms of life in Kenya. Rich fare for the eyes – check it out for yourself!
    
3. Parallel to the above, you and all Lomographers in the world are called upon to enter images in a competition by uploading them at www.lomography.com/kikuyu. First prize is a trip to the Kikuyu Eye Hospital! Subject of the competition is a photograph on 'Eyes' and a photo showing what you've always wanted to show somebody who has just had their eyesight restored. The aim of the journey to Africa: to visit the Kikuyu Eye Hospital, to hand over and officially open the LomoKikuyu LomoWall with the best images from the competition, to inspect everything and deliver a Lomographic report on how the money donated is being used at Kikuyu, along with a week in Nairobi, Kenya, with inspections and excursions (e.g. with the blind marathon runner and world record holder Henry Wanyoike). The trip is scheduled for September. Full competition details are available at www.lomography.com/kikuyu.

10,000 books are lying ready, and the printing presses at Legend Printing in Hong Kong can hardly wait to print out more copies and do even more good in the process (50% of the printing costs are being sponsored by Legend/HK. The rest of the money to produce the book, for the competition and the prize-winner's trip to Kenya is coming from a gracious donor from Tyrol and the Lomographic Society International). And if you’re a managing director, a chancellor or prime minister, or a Hollywood star then you’re more than welcome to order 10, 100, 1000 or more copies of the book to give away so that you can save 10, 100 or 1000 people's eyesight with your money – or even these people's lives. The servers are running at full pelt, the scalpels have been honed, and now it’s up to you to see to it that the big broad world has a little more good in it.

P.S. Light for the World is a charity with the official seal of approval from the Republic of Austria. In December 2006 Light for the World will deliver a report on its income and the use of all the donations raised by the LomoKikuyu project, which will be published on their own website (www.light-for-the-world.org) and at www.lomography.com/kikuyu. Regular updates on the totals donated and news on progress of the LomoKikuyu project available immediately at www.lomography.com/kikuyu.

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