For Black History Month, Voice of Witness put together a list of 10 key resources for deepening understanding of black history and racial justice. The list includes a mix of organizations, resources, and nonfiction books (including oral history!), in no particular order: 1. Book: The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson 2. Film: [...]
Through a consultancy with the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) Teacher-Librarians Department, the VOW Education Program has been working with several middle and high schools around the city to develop oral history projects for their classrooms. At the Ruth Asawa School of the Arts, VOW collaborated with teacher Bruna Lee to create a podcast [...]
By Stephanie He | Based on an interview conducted with Caroline Le Stephanie He is a student at Impact Academy of Art and Technology in Hayward, CA. This story was written as part of a classroom project led by our Germanacos Fellow, Maria Bucon-Scales. After reading oral histories and The Things They Carried, Maria's students interviewed a [...]
This summer, we have been fortunate to have four wonderful interns join us to support our work. In this post, two of our interns Margaret O'Hare from Haverford College and Eliana Swerdlow from Yale reflect on their summer at VOW. Margaret O’Hare My internship at Voice of Witness this summer has been an incredible learning experience and [...]
This summer, we have been fortunate to have four wonderful interns join us to support our work. In this post, two of our interns Molly Hawkins and Ari Kim from Haverford College reflect on their summer at VOW. Molly Hawkins In mid-July, Ari, Margaret, and I were able to attend an oral history workshop [...]
Since 2015, the VOW Education Program's Sharing History Initiative has supported passionate and underfunded teachers, storytellers, and community leaders in bringing social justice-based storytelling into their communities. In summer of 2016, the VOW Education Program launched the Germanacos Fellowship for Sharing History, which provides support for outstanding Sharing History Initiative participants to explore groundbreaking new [...]
A Q&A with our Education Associate Erin Vong & Teacher Sam Aguirre from O'Connell High School This past year, we’ve been working on a consultancy project with San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) to introduce our justice-driven oral history process to their teachers and students, and support them in creating storytelling projects in [...]
by Carl Raybon Carl Raybon is a student at the Prison University Project (PUP) at San Quentin State Prison. His story is one in a series of oral histories that Voice of Witness has collected through collaborative storytelling workshops with PUP students. I grew up in Spring Lake (N.C.). This is a small town [...]
by Troy Dunmore Troy Dunmore is a student at the Prison University Project (PUP) at San Quentin State Prison. His story is one in a series of oral histories that Voice of Witness has collected through collaborative storytelling workshops with PUP students. The moment of my life that I often think about is the [...]
by Praveena Fernes Photo from Our Voice Community Meeting I was 15 when I was first introduced to best practices in storytelling through Voice of Witness (VOW), an organization that illuminates contemporary human rights crises in an oral history book series. Through my seven years of working with VOW, I have learned [...]
