Refugee Speakers Bureau

Storytelling is what makes us human, what unites people across centuries and continents. The Idaho Office for Refugees Speakers Bureau celebrates the diversity in our community through the power of storytelling. You may have heard from our speakers at Treefort, the Idaho Office for Refugees annual conference, JUMP, the Boise Public Library, or elsewhere around town at Neighbor Narratives, where three speakers share a story followed by a moderated question and answer session with local community leaders.

We invite conversations that: 

• celebrate what we have in common,

• give neighbors the chance to meet each other on the two-way street of our welcoming community,

• start with a story to better see the humanity in one another instead of the headlines, each other as neighbors, friends, and colleagues.

We are counting on YOU to support our welcoming community and the arts in Idaho as we grow the program to include a group of youth speakers from local high schools and start a group in Twin Falls. Thank you for your support!

Photo credit: Marcia Franklin
Speakers Bureau members Pascal, Yordanos, and Zuzu take a break from preparing their stories for an event at JUMP. 

"The storyteller appeals to the mind, and appeals ultimately to generations and generations and generations... the storyteller recounts the event — and this is one who survives, who outlives all the others. It is the storyteller, in fact, who makes us what we are, who creates history. The storyteller creates the memory that survivors must have — otherwise surviving would have no meaning,” Chinua Achebe, acclaimed author of Things Fall Apart and champion of  storytellers everywhere.