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As the 2008 election approached, ordinary people across America came together, determined to make their voice heard. Motivated by a hope for the future and a fear of political regression, they campaigned heavily to get people out to vote.

Yes We Can follows one of these grass roots movements, a group of self-sufficient Californian students who travel between their home state and Nevada to campaign for Democrat Barack Obama. Nevada is traditionally a Republican state and taking it would be crucial if Obama was going to win the presidency.

Over several weeks the students volunteered their time cold-calling locals, canvassing in unsafe neighbourhoods and knocking on doors of strangers. Despite constant rejection, they were determined that they could bring change.

Yes We Can picks up their story during final weekend before the election as the students make one final desperate attempt to sway Nevada’s voters.
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It’s only the sharp, distinctive smell of Aurolac glue and blurred patterns in the distant heat fog that reveal the fact that there are people living in the abandoned heat pipes behind the Casa Radio building in Bucharest’s winterly darkness. This almost Dickensian scene is what 31-year old Marius Iordacha, his mother, brother and 5-year old nephew call home. Less than 100 metres away from Marius’ family, a young group of drug addicts have found temporary shelter in an abandoned sewage pipe.

This is Romania’s lost generation and they all have strong stories to tell. Stories about abuse. About violence. Or about economic disasters. They are all losers in a system that has no interest in or resources to help them. And they are only a handful out of an estimated 1500 who live secret and dark lives under the European capital. Marius Iordacha and this group of glue-sniffing children who scavenge the area around the Grozavesti Metro Station cannot see any future ahead of them. They live in dirty piles of trash in the heat between boiling hot water pipes, among used syringes and rats. Outside their makeshift homes, night temperatures drop to a chilling minus 20 degrees. During the day, washing window screens on passing cars barely earns them enough money to buy sufficient food to survive.  Click on the thumbnail to view this story...

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In 2006, India's internal conflicts were listed by Medicens Sans Frontiers as one of the most unreported humanitarian stories in the world. At the heart of this statement are the ongoing insurgencies that plague India's notheastern states like Manipur, where up to 16 different militant groups fight for autonomy, or simply a piece of India's booming economic pie. The conflicts waged between militants and government forces leave the civilians of India's northeast living in marginalised communities that are politically volatile and economically stifled.

Amidst these tensions in Manipur's Churanchandpur District, a climate of minimal opportunity and high unemployment cause a large number of youth to turn to drugs to escape poverty. With heroin being produced in the 'Golden Triangle' that stretches between Myanmar (formerly Burma), China and Thailand, and a primary trafficking route being one from Myanmar across the porus border into India, Manipur’s youth are vulnerable to a surplus of high quality cheap heroin.

With restricted media access for foreign journalists to India's troubled northeast, I visited Churanchandpur District twice in 2007 as a HIV programme officer with an NGO working with injecting drug users. After meeting youth battling heroin addiction on the streets and in rehabilitation centres, people living with HIV contracted through drug use, and families struggling internally with members using heroin, I began to document the lives devastated by Manipur's heroin trade. In a state already plagued by HIV, the second highest per capita in India, drug use facilitates the spread of disease, imposes health risks and degenerates Manipur's social fabric. Every family in Churanchandpur has or knows a user, a local explained to me.

But while heroin, believed to be trafficked by both militants and government forces, continues to flow across the border from India's rogue neighbour Myanmar, and corruption makes the stifling of the heroin trade almost impossible, trafficking goes on. And while India celebrates it's economic boom, little hope is left for any action to stop the free flow of heroin that devastates lives in it's volatile northeast.  Click on the thumbnail to view this story...

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My experience as a visitor to Woodford Correctional Centre every Sunday started as the darkest day of the week for me, but in hindsight, it was an eye-opener to a world too often forgotten by those not affected by it.

The long trip, the cold prison facilities and guards, the pain of walking away at the end of a visit.Through all this darkness the women find strength, love and loyalty. Being a prisoner or a visitor are both experiences most would rather not have, however it became clear to me that the women and children are truly the forgotten ones.

Many women keep the truth about their loved ones whereabouts from family and friends and are left to deal with the emotional, financial and psychological rollercoaster all alone. Corrective services do not provide assistance to families or partners in need, and are known for being difficult and playing psychological games with inmates and their visitors.

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Cyclone Nargis struck the coast of Myanmar on the 2 May 2008, and resulted in the devastation of large parts of the low-lying Irrawaddy delta, Myanmar's key rice-producing region. According to recent United Nations estimates, 2.4 million people have been affected, with the death toll estimated at about 78,000, and 56,000 people still missing.

Despite the enormous number of Burmese that have been injured, lost family members, contracted illnesses and struggled to find enough food, the Burmese military junta has until recently refused to allow aid workers to access the affected areas. Three weeks after the cyclone hit, only a quarter of the people affected had received help.

Sen. Gen. Than Shwe, Burma's military leader, granted aid workers access on the 24th May 2008, on the condition that aid be delivered only via civilian ships and small boats. Than Shwe has declined an offer from the US to use military ships to distribute aid, and as of the 3rd of June those ships are now leaving the waters off Burma’s coast.

Photojournalist James Whitlow Delano was in Myanmar when cyclone Nargis hit. Delano captured the devastating effects of the first five days of the cyclone, revealing the graphic aftermath of a natural disaster such as Nargis, and leaving the viewer wondering exactly what the next images to come from Myanmar will reveal.

www.jameswhitlowdelano.com

Donations can be made at:

Red Cross http://donate.ifrc.org/

World Food Program http://www.wfp.org/english/?ModuleID=137&Key=2831