Recording and listening to stories can encourage healing and understanding amongst people. Healing through stories in particular plays a vital role in the growth and development of young people, especially those impacted by violence, separation of family members, and personal instabilities. In an effort to instill knowledge and appreciation of the impact of sharing stories and preserving them, Austin based organizations Texas After Violence Project (TAVP) and Youth Rise Texas (YRT) are teaming up. Efforts from this partnership aim to teach young people the skills and knowledge of oral history storytelling and archival preservation. Funds raised during this campaign will go towards exploring new ways of partnering that could include training and equipment around oral histories and storytelling using models such as the University of North Carolina Southern Historical Collection Archivist in a Backpack project. This new effort between TAVP & YRT hopes to introduce archival principles, oral history methods, and a new understanding of utilizing personal stories of family incarceration and criminalization to grapple with difficult pasts and current realities.
Given the expertise around trauma and oral histories by the Texas After Violence Project and Youth Rise Texas’ commitment to cultivating a new generation of young leaders against criminalization and deportation, this partnership hopes to build a new relationship between TAVP and YRT that will connect the work of community archives, organizing, and empowerment of young people in Austin.
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