In March of 2015, Campbell Erickson of Austin, Texas, traveled to Cambodia as a volunteer for a project with a local Austin charity called Caring for Cambodia. An avid photographer, Campbell photographed every step of his trip, and he was fascinated by the fascination the Cambodian children had with his camera. They wanted to see photographs. They wanted to be in photographs. They wanted to take photographs. And as Campbell captured the daily lives of these children through his lens, he wondered what kinds of photos the children might take if they had cameras of their own.

So, upon returning home to the United States, Campbell recruited his friends Sophia Alami-Nassif, Reilly Wieland, Joshua Tsang, Christina Cho, and Orian Green to start a project called A Youth Mind, a youth-run organization that addresses the basic human rights of young people around the world, raising awareness and assistance through the very fundamental and universal art of photography.

In his own community, Campbell hosted exhibits of photographs taken by the Cambodian children and gave presentations about their lives in school and at home. In addition to their projects in Cambodia, A Youth Mind has distributed cameras to kids in Colombia, South Sudan, and Kenya. The children feature their photographs and other creative projects in galleries and exhibits in their communities and online.