Browse the 26 fantastic entries to the 2013 NCFR Conference Photo Contest, taken by NCFR members of people and places across the world. Three winners have been chosen from the entries — one first place, two runners up — and will be announced at the World Family Festival held Friday, Nov. 21 at the conference. All photos will also be on display at the conference.

1. “Looking much older than his
twelve years, Kannan carries
the weight of the world on
his shoulders since the death
of his parents. He tirelessly
works from before dawn
until late in the night to
support himself and finish
his schooling. When he can
not work a moment longer
he escapes to the hills near
his village in Tamil Nadu,
India. I took this photo when
he showed me the beauty of
his secret place while I was
teaching at a school for at-risk
children during the
2008-2009 school year.”
-Rebecca Epperly

2. “This is my boyfriend and me near the London Arch
in Victoria, Australia this past summer. I live in Ohio
and he lives in Utah, but we were able to make it
work and meet up in Melbourne!”
-Rachel Brown

3. “In October 2013, I was privileged to travel
to Singapore to participate in an Expert
Panel on Building Capacity for
FamilyMatters!, a program of the Ministry
of Social and Family Development in
Singapore. The government of Singapore
invested $40 million over three years to
cultivate a pro-family environment.
FamilyMatters! is an initiative to enhance
relationship skills, marriage preparation,
and work-life harmony. The Expert Panel
assisted in the development of a
foundational certificate in family life
education. I am pictured here with other
members of the Expert Panel. It was an
amazing experience!”
-Dawn Cassidy

4. “My nephew Ted is father of
3 biological children. He is
married to a Mexican
woman. They take in foster
children and have adopted
several of them. One is
Amaya from West Africa,
another is Honey from
Mexico, and the other is a
Caucasian child.”
-Mary Jo Czaplewski

5. “I took this photo at the BAANA Nursery School in Freetown, Sierra
Leone, in January, 2014, before the ebola epidemic. Today the schools
are closed in Sierra Leone and its economic deprivations have only
worsened. With schools out of session, children lack education and
care and teachers lack wages. On top of ebola, starvation is a real
concern. Nevertheless, this photo captured for me the beauty and
resilience of the Sierra Leonian people who are determined in their
faith that their nation will recover, dedicated to ensuring a better
future, and forever full of smiles. This woman was soothing a
distressed infant and invited me to “snap her,” lingo for taking a
picture.
I am engaged in consultation and technical assistance to various
governmental entities and the Milton Margai College of Education and
Technology in Sierra Leone, West Africa; this work assists the
development of teacher preparation and family support programs.
The nation's physical, civil, health, and to some extent social
infrastructure was devastated by a 11-year civil war (1991-2001) that
resulted in the loss of 50,000 lives and separated many families. There
is a cohort of young adults who were traumatized by the war and
entered adulthood without education or vocational preparation.
Sierra Leone's infant mortality rate is #1 among developing countries
and just 13% of children attend preschool. The adult literacy rate is
60% and the unemployment rate higher than 50% .”
-Anne Farrell

6. “An old family farm
at the museum
created by the man
in the picture, in
Iceland.”
-Marilyn Flick

7. “Man from Maasai tribe of Kenya. As part
of a an education/mission trip to Kenya, I
had the privilege to visit a Maasai village.
The Maasai are the tribe known for
preserving Kenyan culture. They are
known for being courageous, generous,
and honorable.”
-Chris J. Gonzalez

8. “This photo was taken in the Punakha Dzong in
Bhutan in 2010. The group of young Buddhist
monks were busy peeling apples but were also
chatting and having a good time. Seeing them
working together and enjoy themselves, it
struck me that these men had left their
childhood homes at a very young age but had
created a family for themselves within the
monastery.”
-Kristin Hadfield

9. “This photo is from a mission trip I attended
to El Salvador in 2013. This trip's purpose was
to visit three of the many orphanages in the
capital of El Salvador and spend quality time
with all of the children within the facilities.
The organization I went with was called
Visiting Orphans. Visiting Orphans is all about
building quality relationships with the
wonderful people you meet on these trips as
well as aiding the people that you encounter
in being successful individuals despite their
unfortunate circumstances.”
-Kelsea Jones

10. “Our study abroad group
from ECU visited a school in a
poor rural area of Costa Rica.
After presenting them with
needed school materials and
toys and watching them
perform some dances and
teaching them a couple of
our own, we took food to a
couple needy families. The
picture is one such family
where a Tica (Costa Rican
woman) is raising her two
daughters in a very small
home with sheets as interior
walls. Students were
studying concepts of
happiness and materialism.”
-Bryce Jorgensen

11. “Japanese wedding families,
having final posing touches
made in preparation for
photos, on the grounds of
Meiji Jingu, a Shinto Shrine in
Tokyo, on May 26, 2010. The
photo was taken on my return
visit to Japan, having visited
there in 1953 on my way to
and from the Korean War
zone. This was a day of
sightseeing in Tokyo with my
oldest daughter. We were
strolling on the Meiji Jingu
grounds when coming upon
this wedding party.
-Bob Keim

12. “Young boy from the San
Blas Islands in Panama.
Taken July 2014.”
-Markell Kunzelman

13. “This picture was taken outside of a
feeding center in Rogova, Romania back
in 2009. This couple watched us provide
medical services to local community
members for two days before inviting us
into their home to show some members
of our team how they made homemade
wine from the grapes above their entry
way. This picture depicts a fairly
traditional view of a Romanian couple
and their home, by the couple’s
mannerisms to how their home was set
up and to the way they made a living (i.e.,
making wine and baking bread).”
-Julie Leventhal

14. “This photograph of a nearly-blind grandmother and her
orphaned granddaughter was taken in June, 2007, in a
squatter village located in the Phnom Penh, Cambodia,
municipal dump. Too little food, inadequate housing, no
clean water, lack of organized sanitation and abject
poverty define the existence of this grandmother-headed
household and the nearly 7000 other families who live
and work in the dump site. This Cambodian grandmother,
like many other elder-headed households in the village,
faces daily struggles in searches for food, clothing,
educational opportunities for her granddaughter, and
adequate housing that might provide relief from the perils
of their impoverishment.”
-Denise C. Lewis

15. “Jay Mancini and William (Hugh) Milroy (on the left) met
in 1999 at a military families conference in Atlanta, where
Mancini was speaking about building community capacity.
Milroy at the time was a Royal Air Force Wing
Commander. Shortly after retiring from the military Hugh
was appointed as CEO of Veterans Aid, a leading charity in
London, England focused on support of homeless ex-service
members. Jay began consulting with Veterans Aid
and in 2008 conducted research in London with men
served by the charity, centered on the intersections of
resilience and vulnerabilities. Hugh and Jay have spoken at
several international conferences on these issues, in
Ireland, Italy, Switzerland, Amsterdam, and upcoming in
2015, Vienna. This photo was taken in 2010 outside of the
offices of Veterans Aid, located in London on Buckingham
Palace Road. Hugh and Jay use the phrase ‘from welfare to
well-being’ as they describe intervening in the lives of
homeless men.”
-Jay A. Mancini

16. “A recently resettled Somali refugee
family's first visit to New York City fulfills
their desire to experience first hand the
the eclectic melting pot of opportunity
that they had envisioned about for
years. It has been two years since they
have been safely resettled into the
northwestern region of the United States
of America; they were glowing with
euphoria to encounter the technological,
familial, and cultural impacts of
globalization that were indisputably
palpable to them during their visit. The
family was captivated by the compassion
and hospitality that they experienced by
locals, despite their cultural background
and status.
-Neda Moinolmolki

17. “This picture I have taken in 2010
when visited a conference in the
Eastern European Part of Russia, the
Udmurt Republic capital city of
Izhevsk. These women dressed the
way Udmurt women would dress for
a celebration (wedding in a rural
areas till nowadays) and sang in the
ethnic national Udmurt language
(Finno-ugric language group), the
songs' music and lyrics were
Udmurt national. There are about
160 ethnic groups in Russia with a
distinct language, culture, and
customs that are vivid in life
transition moments, such as
weddings, baby births, etc.”
-Ilya Okhotnikov

18. “My wife and I were hiking
the Annapurna Circuit in
Nepal. We encountered
many children caring for
other, smaller children on
the journey. This big sister
had a big responsibility.
Parents were busy moving
supplies up and down the
mountains and doing
other jobs to provide for
their families. Everyone
has a job to do.”
-Kennon Rider

19. “I experienced a full spectrum of learning emotions during
an MFT cultural and academic exchange trip in China.
Especially enlightening was our time in the Guizhou rural
villages, where families earn an average of $300 USD per
year. As we traversed the earthen streets one morning, my
camera caught this alleyway moment: a female villager
pouring out her family's morning rice water. The familial
routine of eating what had been harvested a few hundred
yards from their home struck me as both private and
intriguing. Every morning, there are millions of
international family rituals taking place. This one moved
me.”
-Kelly M. Roberts

20. “This photo presents an
Orthodox Jewish family in
Jerusalem. The frame does
not represent the exact
location, which is the Western
Wall, directly underneath the
bridge to the Dome of the
Rock. I took this photo in July,
2014 during my 8 weeks in
Israel conducting research for
my dissertation.”
-Savannah E. Spivey

21. “This photo was captured in May 2014
during a walk through a small town in
India. The town is located outside of a
tiger reserve at Ranthambore National
Park. This woman and her child were
seen walking down the street of a
market in the town. We did not speak
each other's language, so we were not
able to communicate through words.
-Sarah Taylor

22. “I took both these pictures in
Kyoto, Japan this summer. I
encountered the geisha pictured
in the back streets of Gion late at
night in Kyoto.”
-Bahira Sherif Trask

23. “A family gathering (rural Kenya,
June 2010) in honor of my daughter,
Amelia, and I (I was there working
with Kenyan and Ethiopian
universities on a capacity building
project). They prepare the rice,
reminisce with us, and catch up on
our families even as the younger
children hover to catch a word of
privileged adult information and see
the visitors who, for them, are from
"long ago" and far away. These are
Kamene Patricia Musembei's
mother, Mama Rose, and other
relatives. She is the former high
school student of Kathleen and
Stephan Wilson who were Peace
Corps teachers who met, courted,
and married in Kenya in the 1970s.
-Stephan A. Wilson

24. “This is a photo of my Sister-in-Law,
Louise Crozier, and my Mother-in-
Law, Mabel Winter, taken the week
of Mother's Day 2014 in Weyburn,
Saskatchewan, Canada. Little did we
realize that in less than 2 months my
sister-in-law would die from a very
aggressive form of cancer. She died
on July 22, and 2 weeks later on
August 6, her mother-in-law had her
100th birthday. What was to be a
large party was cancelled because of
Louise's death.
-Cindy Winter

25. “I traveled to Haiti in January
2014 to work on rebuilding a
school in the mountains of Yvon.
Every night after we finished with
our work families would come up
to the building we were staying in
and play games with us. The best
part of my Haiti experience was
being able to spend time every
night talking with parents as they
watched their children, but also
being able to spend time solely
devoted on being with the
families versus focusing on all of
the other things that seem to get
in the way of just being with
another person.”
-Krystal Woolston

26. “This photo was taken in Phnom Penh, Cambodia in May
2011. The photo is of a woman who has a business selling
coconuts from a cart on a street corner. With a few deft
strokes of a machete, she was able to clean a coconut and
prepare a refreshing drink of coconut water. We found out
the woman and her children had been abandoned by her
husband and selling coconuts was one of the few options
available for her to support her family.”
-Ani Yazedijian