The Center for Digital Storytelling has been busy facilitating workshops in which the inspirational participants brought together by the Asian and Pacific Islander Wellness Center's (A&PIWC) Banyan Tree Project have told the stories that are featured in these events to celebrate Asian and Pacific Islander HIV/AIDS Awareness Day on May 19. Since March 2012, the Center for Digital Storytelling has partnered with the A&PIWC on four workshops in the Bay Area, Guam and Honolulu, and will teach three more workshops this summer.
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Sometimes this job affords you amazing contrasts. Here is one week in April:
Tuesday afternoon.
New Haven, Connecticut.
A mad dash to finish a group of stories by rambunctious teenagers. Hip hop music is playing. They are getting up and wandering around and laughing with each other. Especially the tall skinny kid from California; he seems like he belongs there, trading rap lyrics and talking smack.
They must have been friends for years, right?
But most of these young people only met three days before.
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"Why do you volunteer?" The SharedTime project asks volunteers at nonprofits in Toronto to answer this question and to probe deeply, unearthing the real reasons they started – and continue – to give back. Over the past two years, the Center for Digital Storytelling has worked with Volunteer Toronto on the SharedTime project to help capture the spirit of volunteerism in Toronto.
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Eric held us spellbound. We knew we were witnessing a moment especially rich in humanity, in dignity, in compassion, in nobility, in tapping into the most important things that make us human. His story was about finding out he was HIV-positive. All the storytellers in the room were also HIV-positive and were telling different versions of this story. About how HIV made them stronger and wiser and better able to support their friends and the people they work with in their communities.
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In recognition of the UN International Women’s Day on March 8, we offer this short piece about our ongoing work to address gender-based violence in Nepal. Since the piece was originally published on the WITNESS blog, the digital stories by Nepalese women have been screened in a variety of local community and training settings in Kathmandu and beyond, as part of our partner organization SAATHI Nepal’s efforts to protect women’s rights throughout the country.
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For 20 years (this month!), the Center for Digital Storytelling has been supporting people in sharing meaningful stories from their lived experiences – because stories matter. Last week, Joe Lambert (our Founding Director) and I were in L.A. teaching a workshop at the Museum of Natural History. As we drove past the American Film Institute, he said, “This all started right here 20 years ago this week, at our first digital storytelling workshop hosted by AFI.”
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