Our stories must be heard.
The Immigrant Storytelling Program empowers and amplifies the voices of immigrants in our community. The program began in 2022, born out of the vision of immigrants, children of immigrants, and spouses of immigrants. In our first year of the program, we hosted 6 workshops and impacted nearly 200 people. In each workshop, immigrants and children of immigrants were given space to reflect on their experiences and construct their on true stories to share with one another. We hosted a culminating live event in October 2022 on National Immigrants Day in partnership with the Dreamer Resource Center at Sacramento State. At the event, storytellers from the workshops got on stage and told their true personal stories to an audience of over 100 attendees. You can listen to a recording of the stories told at that event here.
The program will continue in 2023 under the leadership of Dr. Meghna Bhat and Dr. Lisa Cantrell with the support of storytellers and poets, Diana Medina and Tamara Spence. Each of our leaders are not only artists– they are social change activists. We believe that the societal narrative around immigrants will change only when our hearts are transformed– and we believe that our hearts are transformed when we truly listen to the lived experiences of one another.
We hope to serve 600 immigrants and children of immigrants in our program this year.
Immigrant Storytelling Program Team
