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The Alexia Foundation has announced that the recipient of the 2014 Women’s Initiative Grant is Mary F. Calvert, an independent photojournalist based in the United States. Calvert will utilize the $25,000 grant for her project “Missing in Action: Homeless Female Veterans.”

“Female veterans are the fastest growing segment of the homeless population in the United States and are four times more likely to become homeless than civilian women,” Calvert tells the foundation in her proposal. Yet, the Department of Veteran’s Affairs is ill equipped to address the issues faced by female veterans, many of whom are mothers and single parents.

Calvert’s work will focus on the Los Angeles region, where the largest concentration of homeless veterans live. She will examine the painfully slow response to this crisis by the beleaguered U.S. Department of Veteran’s Affairs as well as the organizations that attempt to help these women. Calvert will put a human face on this neglected crisis by making compelling photographs of the women affected and allowing them to tell their stories in their own voices.

“Mary Calvert’s project on homeless female veterans in Los Angeles qualifies as the poster story for our mission statement,” said Alexia Foundation co-founder Aphrodite Tsairis. “The stark emotion evoked in her images promises to deliver the raw naked truth about a neglected segment in the military – the debilitating aftermath for abused women in the armed forces.”

Congratulations, Mary!

I am thrilled to be starting my first crowd funding campaign with the new site, IndieVoices and I’m incredibly grateful to The Photo Society, for selecting it to be among the first that they launch. The New York Times ran an interview about this project. Read more about it here.

This is an important story I began with The Nature Conservancy  about indigenous communities uniting to combat poaching in Northern Kenya. If this is an issue you support, please share this link.  My stories will focus on the indigenous nomadic communities of Northern Kenya on the frontlines of the poaching wars and their efforts to preserve community cohesion, ultimately the best immunization against forces that threaten their wildlife and their way of life.

Commercial poaching organized by sophisticated heavily armed criminal networks and fueled by heavy demand from newly minted millionaires in emerging markets is devastating the amazing mega-fauna of the African plains.  It is entirely possible, even likely, that if the current trajectory of death continues, rhinos, elephants and a host of lesser know plains animals will be functionally extinct in our lifetimes.

Much needed attention has been focused on the plight of wildlife and the conflict between heavily armed poacher and increasingly militarized wildlife rangers.  However, the compelling story of indigenous communities caught in the cross-hairs of the poaching wars, and who may hold the key to saving Africa’s great animals, is largely untold.

The vast arid landscape of savannah, thorn-scrub and forested sky islands is populated by 14 indigenous semi-nomadic ethnicities–  Bajun, Boni, Borana, Giriama, Maasai, Ntorobo, Njemps, Ormoa, Pokomo,  Pokot, Rendillie, Samburu, Somali, and Turkana. Healthy populations of elephants including some massive tuskers roam this region while endangered black rhino, Grevy’s zebra and Hirola antelope hold on in globally significant numbers.  But armed poachers taking advantage of the porous borders of Somalia, and South Sudan put wildlife and people at grave risk, increasing instability, inter-clan conflict, and lawlessness. While government and private conservation organizations fight to strengthen anti-poaching efforts, communal cohesion with and between communities is the fabric upon which conservation depend.

Twenty-six indigenous groups covering 2.5 million hectares of Northern Kenya have begun to lay down their guns, relying on dialogue rather than warfare to settle inter-tribal conflict and collectively manage wildlife within their lands. They are beginning to reap the benefits of their efforts as both conservation and tourism dollars flows into this extremely poor region.  And by managing grazing jointly they can better safeguard against the unpredictability of drought and climate change.  Poaching now threatens their recent successes and may rip apart fragile communities and permanently end a nomadic way of life.

Aspiring photographers often ask me where they might go to find the best stories. My answer is always the same – get to know your own backyard, what’s close at hand, rather than traveling around the world just to capture images of something foreign or exotic.  My rationale is that if you can tell these stories of every day life and focus on what we have in common rather than the obvious differences, then you will succeed as a storyteller.

Ironically, I have rarely listened to my own advice and the past dozen years has seen me crisscross the globe playing witness to civil unrest, turmoil, and violence in over 85 countries.  I broke my pattern in 2010 when I moved to Montana and have tried to base myself in this beautiful but austere landscape.

The images I am now able to create tell the story about our deep connection to land, the importance we place in stewardship, and a vanishing way of life in the American West. The folks whom I have got to know are remarkable in their fortitude, work ethics, and the neighborliness they exhibit everyday.  It is not an easy story but one that requires patience and persistence to birth – and yet I believe it is as rewarding in the telling as the more sensational events I have had the opportunity to cover.

Check out this month’s Viewfinder in Orion magazine and the New Yorker lens blog to see some of my images from  home.