During his senior year in high school, David Noyes received a gift that would change his life: a camera. This started his lifelong love of story-telling through photographs.

With his Bachelor of Arts in photography from the Rochester Institute of Technology and a Master of Fine Arts from Harvard University, he started traveling to glamorous places and not so glamorous places, photographing and writing about all he experienced. The beauty of his photographs and stories take your breath away as they tear at your heart strings. He took pictures and wrote articles from around the world for countless magazines and compiled these into an award-winning book entitled The Photographing Tourist.

David held a special place in his heart for Kenya. Through his travels, he came to understand the importance of education in underserved communities, and it was this knowledge that compelled David to found Innocent Eyes Project, a foundation that gave grants for the education of students in communities throughout the developing world.

David passed away suddenly in November of 2019. There are no words to describe how shocked, saddened and broken his family and friends are by this loss. We will remember not just the big adventures, but the small moments, that made him the incredible man he was.

With his passing, his family has decided to dissolve the Innocent Eyes Project and continue his legacy with a scholarship in his honor and memory through the Makena Children’s Foundation.

The David F. Noyes Memorial Scholarship will be funded through donations previously made to the Innocent Eyes Project and will continue with donations made in David’s memory to the Makena Children’s Foundation.

David’s lifelong friend, Dave Eusanio, is a member of the Makena Children’s Foundation Board of Directors and will oversee the scholarship. We are extremely grateful to Dave for continuing to honor David in this way.

We would like to humbly and sincerely thank the many people who have supported David’s dream of providing an education to students in some of the most poverty-stricken and remote corners of the globe with their donations to the Innocent Eyes Project.  We hope you will join us in carrying on his dream by continuing to donate in his memory to the David F. Noyes Memorial Scholarship.