California Story Fund
Contando Nuestras Historias (Telling Our Stories):
The Women of the Latina Center
The Center for Digital StorytellingBerkeley
Project Director Nancy Palate
Emerging Latina leaders tell their stories
This project collected the stories of women who are peer leaders in a women’s heath leadership program at the Latina Center in Richmond, Calif. an organization devoted to improving the quality of life of Latina immigrants and their families.
As part of the leadership program, the women, from Mexico, Central America and South America, create outreach projects aimed at improving their individual neighborhoods. Since the program was established, the women have established, among many other projects, a health-focused Spanish language radio show and workshops for Latino families searching for ways to send their children to college.
For the CCH project, the women participated in a digital storytelling workshop at the Berkeley-based Center for Digital Storytelling. During the sessions, the Latina Center staff worked with the women to assist them in preparing written personal narratives and in taking photographs and collecting images to illustrate their stories.
The digital stories were screened at the Richmond Public Library. “The library event gave workshop participants a chance to share their histories and accomplishments with members of the general public,” said Project Director Nancy Palate.