Babita Patel
Babita Patel is a humanitarian photographer whose work has been featured in The Guardian, MSNBC, Al Jazeera, Time Out New York, NY Daily News, The Indypendent, Activist Philanthropist, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Journal News, Alliance Life, and Corrections Today. She is the Founder & Executive Director of KIOO Project, an NGO that advances gender equality by teaching photography to girls in economically challenged communities who, in turn, teach photography to boys.
Babita has also put life through the lens for organisaions such as WaterAid, Water & Sanitation for the Urban Poor, WASH United, Hudson Link for Higher Education in Prison, Woman’s Prison Association, The Mission Continues, The Third Wave Volunteers, ealing Haiti, Rebuilding Together NYC, Girl Be Heard, The GO Project, 3Seams, Long Island City Partnership, Print 4 Change, and Zylie & Friends. Her work has been exhibited across the world, including shows in New York, Atlanta, Santa Monica and Lisbon.
BREAKING OUT IN PRISON
“My grandfather went to Sing Sing. My father, my uncle, my brother went to Sing Sing. I went to Sing Sing."
Poor schools. Violent neighborhoods. Easy drugs. No jobs. No support. No options. In the disadvantaged communities of urban America, the cradle-to-prison pipeline locks young men out of opportunity long before it locks them up.
Meet 15 men doing something about it—15 men who got an education inside Sing Sing Correctional Facility, and used it to break out of the cycle. Today, they are role models for young men in their communities. And they are here to put a human face on effective solutions to ending the epidemic of mass incarceration in America today.