PREFACE BY PROJECT CREATOR
When I came up with the idea of The Other Hundred almost seven years ago, I never in my wildest imagination thought we might produce an edition on The Other Hundred Healers.
After the inaugural edition, simply titled The Other Hundred, we published the Entrepreneurs and Educators editions. We had a series of ten in mind, to be completed in ten years. The fourth one in the series that I wanted to help create was The Other Hundred Migrants, to be followed by Chefs, Homes, Authors and even The Other Hundred Performers.
In 2019 we at GIFT started seeking sponsorship for The Other Hundred Migrants, as I felt that narratives on migrants needed to be presented in the way that The Other Hundred does, away from how mainstream media has polarised their stories. After all, we are all migrants, or are descended from migrants: migration has been the story of humanity in so many incarnations, and the edition intended to portray the complex, at times difficult, and yet often celebratory process of the movement of people.
But by mid-2019, support did not materialise, especially in Hong Kong, the city where I live. Instead, Hong Kong became the focus of global attention as protests broke out. Amidst all the confusion and negativity there seemed to be little room for discussions, conversations and reconciliation in order to find solutions – you might even say that healing went into hiding. So I was motivated to write an article about how Hong Kong needed to find ways to heal itself, and suggested building a territory-wide forum called ‘Let’s Talk’ – a forum for ideas, discussions, and ultimately, healing.
As many in Hong Kong began to look into how its society needed to heal, we were hit by the pandemic in early 2020. Out of nowhere, a form of healing returned. Despite the convulsions of the past six months and the deep political divisions, the society came together to heal through collective action – there was a deep understanding of healing, that was unwritten and unspoken. A form of society-wide healing that moved beyond just the self to heal the collective: healing through solidarity, understanding fragility and putting aside differences. Differences that can be revisited and resolved through a remarkable form of healing – listening and talking.
Hong Kong thus created an environment of public protection, a central part of any healing process. ‘Prevent and protect’ was the collective understanding. Be aware of others; an injury to one is an injury to all. The true strength of a society lies in how deeply embedded the spirit of healing is through collective action within social psychology and DNA: a different understanding of what it means for a society to be free.
Thus, as the world came to terms with the scale and enormity of the pandemic and as lockdowns became the norm, it also became part of the daily news to learn about the struggles of people from across the world, including the heroic actions of health workers. Later, it became clear that there were other ‘essential workers’ and the media coverage expanded to include shop owners, supermarket attendants, food delivery people, security personnel, transport workers, and all those other professions that so many of us who are privileged enough to “work from home” take for granted.
Yet it was clear that most of the global coverage of these workers was from major economies like the US, UK and global capital cities like New York, London and Paris. They missed out acts of healing seen in smaller cities and less prominent countries: we did not get any sense of what was happening in Mali, Bhutan, Ecuador, Tonga in the Pacific Islands or Syria, to list a few.
So, in April 2020, we started work on The Other Hundred Healers. At a time of an unprecedented global challenge, which also occurred at a time of rising global tensions and splintering, the hope was to capture the solidarity and healing within countries and societies from around the world. Would it be possible to capture stories from all corners of the world - and not just cities, but rural communities and villages too?
The point was to reveal who the healers are in countries that are so often overlooked. It was to also remind those who contribute to the divisions between nations, regions, that their ideological beliefs and attempts to sow the seeds of conflict will be resisted and overshadowed by the mass of humanity who - despite some of the horrors visited upon their communities by the pandemic - are able to rise above the ‘me’ and contribute to the healing of the ‘other’ and ‘them’.
I hope you find this collection of photo stories from 100 countries of interest. I hope it brings to everyone an acute and warm sense of appreciation of how we all live in such different conditions, and that these conditions are transient, yet can be leveraged for the greater good. Across the world, people have done what they can with their good fortune to help their neighbours and communities. They were not in possession of masterplans to save the world, but they responded by offering healing to their communities, which is where it all starts. They used what they had, certain skills, a bicycle, access to technology, surplus food, the ability to paint, playing music or a medical skill and maybe just the ability to speak and listen to soothe a soul.
In putting this edition together, we faced challenges that we did not face in producing previous editions. We were asking people to send photo story submissions during a time of great pain and lockdowns. Journalists and photographers could not resort to their existing portfolio of photos and thus had to go and take pictures at a time when movement was being restricted. We did not want hundreds of pictures of hospital wards and healthcare workers, as we wanted to portray a more expansive understanding of healing. Miraculously, people from around the world responded and what was submitted provided the team here with great inspiration every day. To walk into the office and hear that we received a submission from countries like Chile, Ethiopia and Myanmar was thrilling.
The Other Hundred Healers is the first photojournalism series of its kind. No other photojournalism project across the world has captured these deeply positive and moving aspects from the global pandemic so thoroughly.
It will stand the test of time. “The pandemic of 2020” will be spoken about for decades to come, and this project is an attempt to capture the moment from an entirely unique angle.
We have been overwhelmed by the response of the photojournalists and the power of these stories, which we hope will interest and inspire a global population in the process of healing and creating unity.
We would like to thank all the contributors for making this project a success and allowing us to use their pictures. We hope readers will in their own way reach out to the contributors and build friendships around the stories shared. Needless to say, we had to make some very tough choices, which meant turning down some very good photo-story submissions. To those who were not selected, we remain incredibly grateful nonetheless, and hope you understand that we could only pick 100 stories from a wide range of regions.
We want to also thank the essayists who have provided a rich tapestry of perspectives to capture this moment in human history and translate it into what got us here, why we need better understanding of the mess we created and how we might get out of it.
I want to thank all of the GIFT team, especially the Project Manager Jaqueline P’ng, and the Co-Editors Rohan Hazell and Nicholas Gordon, the interns (Amir Harith, Sinan Shaharuddin, Charlotte Cheang and Mikhail Petra) and other volunteers who supported this project.
Very importantly, we want to thank our sponsors for supporting a project that might not help them sell another product or service, but which we have no doubt will get a global audience to understand their sense of purpose.
We are sure the photo-stories will bring all who flick through each story a great healing. Read, enjoy, and carry the positivity of these moments of healing with you, because even when the world is at its darkest, people will always rise to the challenge of lighting the way for healing.