Know a few people who’d like to share their personal or family stories and experiences at your location? VOICES will come to you!

VOICES is the perfect vehicle for collecting stories from retirement communities, schools or similar organizations where people are motivated and interested in preserving their memories for posterity.  The history of your company is also another great way to commemorate significant milestones, enrich relationships, and connect with people who are important to your life and your organization.

What we’ll need:

• A space at your location (enough space for a large van and 28’ long trailer)
• A minimum of four individual participants willing to share their stories.
• Shared marketing of the event (e.g., on your website, in your organization’s newsletter, or signage in the lobby of your building)

Some stories we’ve collected so far:

• Pamela Benjamin came to the U.S. from Australia on a spousal visa only to discover she couldn’t even check out a library book.
• Angelique Mugabekazi fled the atrocities of the Rwandan genocide when she was five years old, then struggled to survive daily life in a lawless refugee camp.
• Grand Rapids native Donna Troost remembers a rubber shortage during World War II and the time her dad had to get permission from the government so that she could ride her bicycle to school.

Other people who have shared their journeys so far include:

• 87-year-old twin sisters,
• a labor organizer,
• a young man with autism,
• ArtPrize artists,
• the Wyoming Riddler,
• a felon,
• and a trailblazing woman entrepreneur.

Oral history—the collection and study of individual histories, experiences of disasters, important events or everyday life—is a tradition as old as civilization itself. Using audiotapes, videotapes, or transcriptions of planned interviews, oral history strives to obtain information from different perspectives, most of which cannot be found in written sources.