New Project with Longtime Partners OurStoryBridge: Museum Association of New York "Museums as Spaces for Democracy"
We are extremely grateful for our partnership with OurStoryBridge, an exceptional nonprofit organization dedicated to helping libraries, museums, historical societies, and issue-oriented organizations develop community oral history projects. In many of their partnerships, as they explain here, in order to meet their objective “to encourage younger generations to become more engaged community members”, they “recommend Memria, an online audio collecting platform, to upload stories that can be embedded on each community’s website, making these stories easily accessible for general engagement online and for directed classroom use. For increased access, Memria provides shareable links; direct posting to social media; and free, downloadable audio streaming transcriptions of every story into 13 languages. Additionally, communities and individuals maintain the creative control to tell their own stories, thereby honoring the authenticity of their intimate voices and collective cultures”. Other projects supported by OurStoryBridge can be found here.
In 2024, we look forward to working with OurStoryBridge and the Museum Association of New York (MANY) on its project “A New Agora for New York: Museums as Spaces for Democracy,” supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the William G. Pomeroy Foundation.
I Defend Rights Archive in the Works
One of our oldest and most robust projects, I Defend Rights -- in partnership with the Norwegian Human Rights Fund -- is in the process of being archived and will continue to live on as a vital resource for family members, researchers, and human rights advocates in the future. Since its inception, IDefendRights has collected hundreds of stories and held numerous exhibits and events.
VivaVoz Continues Its Pioneering Work
Another long-term project, VivaVoz.Org, a four-year partnership with the Truth Commission in Colombia, is transitioning to new partners and will continue to do its amazing work identifying and sharing stories of resilience, reconciliation, and acts of peace during conflict, documenting community histories, stories, testimonies, and experiences of individuals to help build sustainable peace in Colombia.
Afghan Voices of Hope Continues to Grow
A third amazing project Afghan Voices of Hope, has made strides in sharing impactful stories through the project’s website, traveling exhibits, educational workshops, and public events. Notably, the Musée national de l'histoire de l'immigration in Paris recently acquired stories from the project for its permanent collection. In its third year, the project seeks to elevate the impact of its work with the production of a feature documentary film: “Khana Kojast? (Where is Home?).” A book version, “Afghan Voices of Hope: Stories of Escaping the Taliban to Unknown Destination,” by Gaisu Yari, will be published in 2024 by the University of Illinois Press.
Other projects include the Life After Ford Foundation (LAFF) “Recollection Collection” project (Ford Foundation alums: contact us if you want to participate); and ongoing consulting on complex questions of memory, conflict, and narrative construction in Ukraine with the multilateral Partnership For a Resilient Ukraine (PFRU) (see, for example, this lecture at Kyiv School of Economics last September).
Image by Louis Bickford from the exhibition “Called by Name” (Warsaw, Poland) which tells the story of people who were outlawed and murdered without trial simply because they helped those whom the occupiers considered “subhuman”.