Voice of Witness
Founded by author Dave Eggers and physician/human rights scholar Lola Vollen, Voice of Witness is a nonprofit book series that uses oral history to depict human rights crises around the world through the stories of the men and women who experience them.
The Abundance Foundation supports the Voice of Witness Education Program to provide its readers – from high school students to educators, policy makers and advocates – with compelling, reality-based human rights documentation that can be used for teaching, training and advocacy. The Voice of Witness Education Program aims to bring socially relevant, oral history-based curricula into schools throughout the U.S.
The Voice of Witness education program includes the Sharing History Initiative, bringing their stories and lesson plans to under-resourced classrooms and communities: 98% of participants serve English language learners, 96% work in low-income communities, and 67% serve majority students of color.
The Abundance Foundation also partnered with Voice of Witness to offer “Amplifying Unheard Voices: The Power of Story, ” a 4-day oral history training for educators from Grade 8 through college. Participants engaged in an interactive process that introduced the skills, ethics and social significance of creating oral history and enabled them to empower their students to create their own oral history projects and enhance their educational experience through the process.
To learn more about the project, please visit their website and view the video below, featuring Voice of Witness Executive Director, mimi lok: