This comprehensive guide allows teachers and students to explore contemporary issues through the transformative power of oral history, and to develop the communication skills necessary for creating vital oral history projects in their own communities. The Power of the Story includes:
- Flexible core curriculum-aligned lesson plans
- Excerpts from the Voice of Witness series
- Step-by-step instructions for creating oral history projects in the classroom and the community
Last Sunday, Robin Levi, c0-editor of Inside This Place, Not of It: Narratives from Women’s Prisons, sp0ke on a panel discussing incarcerated mothers on MSNBC’s The Melissa Harris-Perry Show. Joining Robin on the panel was Tina Reynolds, co-founder of WORTH, and Reverend Vivian Nixon, co-founder of the Education Inside Out Coalition.
Click here for more information on Inside This Place, Not of It.
Last week, South African authorities passed a law requiring their officials to investigate and prosecute members of Robert Mugabe’s government guilty of torturing political opponents. Click here to read Peter Godwin’s op-ed in The New York Times about this landmark human rights law and the resistance it faces from South Africa’s own police force.
Read the review to learn more about Patriot Acts, the effects of surveillance in the post-9/11 era, and why author Jennifer Sears writes, “The stories collected in Patriot Acts…will likely continue to gain resonance as increased surveillance and security tactics become the norm of everyday life in the United States.”
Date: Tuesday, May 22nd, 2012
Time: 5:30-7:30pm
Location: The Fred T. Korematsu Institute for Civil Rights and Education, 55 Columbus Street, San Francisco, CA 94111
Participants will work with Voice of Witness staff and local oral history educators, coming away with oral history training, lesson plans and curricula support, and complimentary copies of Patriot Acts for use in schools and organizations.
The Walk will benefit the work of the Center for Justice and Accountability, The Genocide Education Project and the SF Bay Area Darfur Coalition, the walk’s host. For more information and to register forthe Walk, please visit www.walkagainstgenocide.org.
Voice of Witness’ Education Program in the Community: Join San Lorenzo High School for “The Russell City Project”
Learn how teachers working with Voice of Witness bring their oral history skills and training into the classroom by seeing their work in action. On April 20th and 21st, students at San Lorenzo High School will present The Russell City Project, a documentary theatre piece created from student-led oral history interviews.This project was sparked during our 2011 teacher training workshop Amplifying Unheard Voices. Click here to learn more about this workshop, and to register for our 2012 teacher training.
The Russell City Project documents the story of a diverse, unincorporated community in Alameda County whose residents faced displacement by eminent domain laws and a series of unexplained arson fires in the wake of industrial development in the 1960s.
This community performance takes place at 7pm on …
Read an excerpt from our 2011 title Nowhere to Be Home: Narratives from Survivors of Burma’s Military Regimefeatured on Human Goods, a news and resource site that sheds light on issues modern-day slavery and works to help people connect to the ways in which they can combat it.
About Nowhere to Be Home: Decades of military oppression in Burma have led to the systematic destruction of over 3,000 ethnic minority villages, one of the largest numbers of child soldiers in the world, and the displacement of millions of people internally and across borders. Nowhere to Be Home is an eye-opening collection of oral histories exposing the realities of life under military rule. In their own words, men and women from Burma describe their lives in the country that Human …
This week, Voice of Witness editor Sibylla Brodzinsky published an article in the Christian Science Monitor, continuing her reportage of the release of hostages held by Colombia’s FARC rebels. The FARC released ten hostages this week, all of whom have been held in captivity by the rebel group for over a decade. There is hope that this action will begin peace talks between the Colombian government and FARC.
Sibylla is co-editor of the forthcoming title by Voice of Witness, Throwing Stones at the Moon: Narratives from Colombians Displaced by Violence. Coming September 2012, Throwing Stones at the Moon describes the most widespread of Colombia’s human rights crises: forced displacement. Click here to learn more about the book.
To read Sibylla’s article in the Christian Science Monitor, click here.
Voice of Witness is a nonprofit book series that empowers those most closely affected by contemporary social injustice. Using oral history as a foundation, the series depicts human rights crises around the world through the stories of the men and women who experience them. Voice of Witness was founded by author Dave Eggers and physician/human rights scholar Lola Vollen, and is the nonprofit division of McSweeney's Books.
Voice of Witness is delighted to announce The Power of the Story: The Voice of Witness Teacher’s Guide to Oral History, a free companion resource for teachers using titles in the Voice of Witness series.
