The Face of Democracy was started in the fall of 2006 by writer and Middlebury College Scholar-in-Residence Sue Halpern, with the support of the Adirondack Community Trust, the HRK Foundation, and the Rivendell Foundation, in addition to a number of very generous individual donors, as well as Middlebury College and the Blue Mountain Center.
Halpern recruited a crew of remarkably talented documentary photographers and journalists: Wing Young Huie and David Hage in Minnesota; Kim Sevcik, Malia Wollan and Rick Rocamora in California; and Woody Widlund in New York. Later, she was assisted by Middlebury College students Leigh Arsenault, Ian Burgin, Emily Wheeler, Corinne Almquest, Aylie Baker and Leah Bevis.
They worked with students from Sarah Zosel's journalism class at the Community of Peace Academy (charter school) in St. Paul; Leslie Harrison's 10th grade English class at Johnsburg Central (public) School in Johnsburg, NY, and with 10th grade humanities students at the Lighthouse Central School in Oakland.