‘Our Lens Challenge’ to focus on photos from a teen perspective

This November, James and Deborah Fallows, authors of “Our Towns: A 100,000 Mile Journey into the Heart of America,” will come to Delaware to deliver the Delaware Community Foundation’s 2019 Building Opportunity Keynote at the Hotel du Pont.

The Fallows — James has been a longtime national correspondent for The Atlantic and is a former chief speechwriter for President Jimmy Carter, while Deborah is a linguistics Ph.D who has written for National Geographic, The New York Times and Slate — spent five years traveling to small towns across the United States in a single-engine prop airplane, observing both dysfunction and potential for reform on the local level.

Inspired by the upcoming visit, the University of Delaware’s Human Development and Family Sciences Department, Horn Entrepreneurship and the Partnership for Arts and Culture are collaborating with Delaware Delaware Community Foundation, Dual School and FourYouth Productions to launch the One Lens Challenge for Delaware public, private, diocesan and homeschool students in grades 9 to 12.

The statewide photography competition allows “high school students to showcase the stories of their towns,” said Zack Jones, director of Dual School, the project-based design thinking program for teens in New Castle County. “We’re going to help [students] identify and issue or highlight a bright spot.”

Collaborator FourYouth Productions is a Wilmington-based nonprofit that offers STEM education to under-resourced kids in four areas: photography, science, engineering and culinary art.

Interested students can follow the project’s Youtube channel for instructions and photography tutorials. Submissions, due on October 15, are required to include a short 100-word essay about the photo.

Submissions will be featured in a statewide photo journal. Up to five selected students will get to meet the Fallows when they come to Delaware, receive a $100 Amazon gift card and be honored at the Nov. 6 Building Opportunity Keynote event, where their work will be featured.