Telling My Story

Telling My Story celebrates its first year as an independent nonprofit organization this month! We thought you might be interested in the work we do. A giant THANK YOU to everyone who has made this year such a success. To celebrate, we want to fill you in on what is coming up, and to ask you for your support as the organization enters its second year. 2008 was very exciting year for Telling My Story, in the past 12 months the organization has:

• Incorporated as a nonprofit with federal tax exempt status
• Established a dedicated and talented board of directors
• Continued to develop Dartmouth College’s first community based service learning course
• Formed an ongoing partnership with the Valley Vista Rehabilitation Center in Bradford, Vermont
• Reproduced Telling My Story outside of New England for the first time in a men’s prison in Puerto Rico

The foundation of Telling My Story was laid in 1995, when Pati began using theater to teach literacy to Latin American women at a settlement house in New York’s Lower East Side. Over the years, Pati has carefully honed the program to empower individuals behind social walls to find their voice. Through theater, participants gain both the tools to improve their own lives and the agency to teach others by sharing their personal experience.

In 2009, nearly 15 years since the first project, Telling My Story is poised to dramatically strengthen and expand its programming and impact. We need your support to make this happen!  In the coming months, Pati will once again co-teach a community based service-learning course with Dartmouth College at Valley Vista. With your help, we will be able to bring the Telling My Story program back to a correctional facility in Northern Vermont. We currently have more sites that would like to host the program than we have time or funding.

In order to continue to build upon this momentum, we must secure adequate financial resources to sustain the programs. Your generosity is needed to make this work continue. Ironically, the very same partnerships that have led to the intense demand for Pati’s time and expertise also present a fundraising dilemma. Potential funders, individuals, and foundations hear about Telling My Story’s partnerships with Dartmouth and Valley Vista and assume that they are able to entirely fund the work — but this is not the case. Although some of the partners do pay part of the program costs, these funds do not cover the entire cost of any one project, nor are they adequate to support infrastructure necessary to sustain the work.

In the last 12 months, Telling My Story has brought together more than 30 individuals behind social walls with more than 30 community members to develop shows in three different venues. Between one and two hundred people, from the Northeast Kingdom, to the Upper Valley, to Puerto Rico, participated in the resulting social reflection as audience members. Last fall Telling My Story began a partnership with a women’s rehabilitation center in Bradford, Vermont. Women at Valley Vista are short-term residents; many leave the facility before the program is complete. This past winter, Pati took the program to a medium/minimum security correctional facility in Puerto Rico. The prisoners there are men serving long sentences. Despite these differences, the Telling My Story program has been very well received in both environments, in fact, both would like to make the program part of their ongoing operations. This is a testament to both the flexibility of the program and the need for such a space for social reflection.

In order to make this possible, and to expand programming to local community organizations, we need your financial support.

Pati has been invited to participate in a two-week artists residency focused on prison issues at the Blue Mountain Center in New York State.  Fifteen artists were invited to share their work related to incarceration, the prison system, and inmates and their stories.  Pati will spend her time developing a facilitator’s handbook for Telling My Story as well as sharing and networking with other artists and activists.

“I am excited to give myself this time to focus on just my writings, and also to meet with people doing works that relate to my work,” Pati said.  “When I was learning about their work, I felt hopeful.” Hopefully, the retreat will also give her a chance to catch her breath and reflect on a very busy year of
programs!

I am just back from a very exciting and productive winter reproducing Telling My Story in Puerto Rico. I spent eight weeks at Guayama 945, a men’s correctional facility in the south of the island. During the project I worked with 16 inmates and 11 volunteers from the outside.

The show was called Tell Me Your Story, and it was full of bright energy, great humor, and even better natural actors. Once again I was impressed with the dedication and commitment the entire group of participants had to the program. Inmates that participated started from the very beginning, and they all made it to the end of the project.

What struck me the most was that at least 75% of the inmates working with me were serving life in prison. It was a sad reality that made me commit to working with them every January and February. I am excited about it and hopeful that we can establish an ongoing program.