The goal of the stories made during this project was to explore the impacts of severe weather, including extreme heat, flooding and wildfire smoke, on the lives of indigenous speakers of Zapoteco, Mixteco and Purépecha in a way that honors and lifts up their stories and identity. The stories are recorded in Spanish and in the Indigenous language of the storyteller. They shed light on the intersecting dynamics in the lives of individuals and communities. The connections between physical safety, economic survival, family bonds and cultural identity are explored through richly nuanced stories.

Over the past two years, StoryCenter has been honored to play a role in an innovative program in the Rio Grande Valley of Southern Texas. The project called Historias Americanas, was a three-year intensive for K-12 educators, designed by project partners, the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley and the Museum of South Texas History. The intent was to improve the quality of American history education in the Brownsville and Edinburg school districts by building on student and community knowledge and shining a light on the cultural wealth of the area. Local history was melded with the broader history of the United States to fill in faces that were blatantly missing from textbooks.

Despite women’s increased participation over the past several decades in public leadership roles, they still hold a mere 21 percent of ministerial positions globally. Only three countries have 50 percent or more women in parliament, and only 22 countries are headed by women. Women in leadership positions face discriminatory norms, exclusionary policies, and a lack of access to finance that make it more challenging for them to achieve positions with higher levels of responsibility. Yet when women have seats at decision-making tables, they bring transformative changes to entire communities and the world at large.

What you see as you drive through Chaffee County, Colorado, is beauty—nearby snowcapped mountain peaks, clear blue skies more days than not, and aspen forests. What you don’t usually see is the struggle many people face to find housing, feed their children, and tackle all of the challenges raised during the long months of COVID-19.

The rich legacy of the civil rights movement was commemorated across the country in 2013, which marked the 30th Anniversary of the historic March on Washington. To honor the work of activists in the 1950s and 60s, several groups in the City of Denver, CO developed a project to encourage awareness and present-day engagement with civil rights issues, as part of StoryCenter's All Together Now initiative. 

Despite increased attention within the public health field to the need to refrain from stigmatizing teen mothers, prevailing views continue to suggest that these young women cause a whole host of social problems. In an effort to reframe public conversations about young moms and sexuality, health, and reproductive rights, the University of Massachusetts, Amherst School of Public Health initiated the “Hear Our Stories” project, in collaboration with StoryCenter and several other MA and national organizations.

The goal of the Banyan Tree Project (BTP) is to eliminate HIV stigma in Asian and Pacific Islander communities across the United States and its Pacific territories. The BTP's communications and community engagement campaign is led by the Asian and Pacific Islander Wellness Center in San Francisco (A&PIWC), and is funded by the Centers for Disease Control. At the heart of the project is a commitment to sharing stories about HIV that empower people with knowledge and inspire action.

The fervor in the United States over the "War on Drugs" and the development of punitive "crime reduction" strategies in the 1980s and 1990s created mandatory minimum sentencing laws that dramatically increased prison populations across the country- at the local, state, and federal level. In California, the "Three Strikes" law of 1994 created mandatory sentences for any third felony conviction, leading to people receive sentences of 25 years to life for stealing a slice of pizza or for any number of other non-violent offenses. Experiences of incarceration, re-entry into society, and the obstacles facing those who have served time are critical stories that must be documented, in the country that leads the world in imprisoning its population.