On the threshold of what will undoubtedly be a challenging and eventful new year, we invite you to look back at some of our 2024 accomplishments, celebrating a year of meaningful and exciting projects, events, and collaborations.
Film Screening at the Tin Shed Theater in Patagonia
Last spring, in partnership with Patagonia Creative Arts Association and the Tin Shed Theater, we presented the film SHURA: The Trail is Never Paved, featuring Shura Wallin, co-founder of the Green Valley-Sahuarita Samaritans. The film follows Shura, an octogenarian black belt in karate who leads by example and inspires hundreds of other humanitarians to provide life-saving aid to stranded migrants crossing the harsh Sonoran Desert at the U.S./Mexico border near Nogales. Shura Wallin was present along with the film's co-director, David Damian Figueroa. The screening was followed by a very engaging panel discussion and Q&A.
Book Talk by Author Reyna Grande
In May, we welcomed best-selling and award-winning author Reyna Grande, along with welcoming back activist and filmmaker David Damian Figueroa. Teaming up with the Patagonia Public Library, we hosted a book talk facilitated by Figueroa about Grande's memoirs, in which she writes about her life before and after arriving in the US from Mexico as an undocumented child immigrant. It was an illuminating conversation about immigration, family separation, language trauma, and her writing journey. The evening concluded with an afterglow, during which attendees were able to continue to engage with both Reyna and David.
Summer Collaboration: Border Community Alliance Borderlands Ambassador Interns
This summer, we were so excited to have the Border Community Alliance Borderlands Ambassador Interns visiting the guests in our apartments in Nogales, Sonora, Mexico. The college interns, Kai, Callie, and Isabel, twice weekly provided companionship, taught English, did crafts, and played games and basketball. The six weeks culminated in a very special field trip to a local park and pool. By all accounts, it was a significant experience for both the college students and our guests. Please see our newsletters HERE and HERE for some wonderful moments captured by our star volunteer photographer, John Ashley.
Our Third Peek Behind the Curtain and the Launching of The Border Before Project
In September, we partnered with Sierra Club Borderlands, The Patagonia Museum, Pimeria Alta Museum, La Linea, and We Love Nogales (Santa Cruz Country Public Media) to present our third annual "Peek Behind the Curtain: The Making of a Podcast" event that was held at the beautiful Wittner Museum in Nogales, Arizona.
"Peek Behind the Curtain" is a forum that Voices developed to showcase The Border Chronicle, a critical source of border news founded by award-winning journalists Todd Miller and Melissa del Bosque. This particular event was also the launch of The Border Before, an oral history project initiated by Voices that is currently in development with the organizations that co-sponsored this event.
The border has not always been as it is now, and in fact, has never been as it is now. We anticipate that this project will be a valuable resource for filmmakers, musicians, documentarians, journalists, and historians because it specifically records the personal observations of folks who grew up on the US/MX border in binational "Ambos Nogales" and nearby communities. Detailing memories of what the border was like "before" compared to how they experience it now, these audio recordings will be archived into an online collection made available to the public, creating an oral history of the living and genuinely authentic "voices from the border". We believe that this archive will be a springboard for the creation of many meaningful future projects that we hope will create a counter-narrative to the perceived need for an increasingly dangerous and inhumane militarized border and border wall.
The Peek event featured two long-time borderlands residents, Celia Concannon and Gustavo Lozano, who were interviewed about "the border before" in front of a live audience, followed by a Q&A. The event was recorded and made into a podcast for The Border Chronicle.
We're in conversation with the Special Collections Library at the University of Arizona about hosting The Border Before oral history archive. In early 2025, Voices will seek interviewees from the borderlands community. Please stay tuned for more details about this exciting project and how to get involved!
Lastly, the Welcome Quilt Project Continues to Grow
As many of our readers know, we've been involved with an ever-expanding project and partnership with Gale Hall that continues to surprise us. The Welcome Quilt Project grew out of seeds planted at our ten-day event in early 2020 called Leaving Home: Migration Through the Eyes of Children. The original Welcome Quilts were created as an offshoot of the empathy and belonging-based curriculum paired with viewing the art exhibit that was the centerpiece of the Leaving Home events. Called Hope & Healing: The Art of Asylum, the exhibit was curated by then Casa Alitas' arts and activities director, Valerie Lee James, from the artwork of children of asylum seekers staying at Alitas' Welcome Center in Tucson. The exhibit was brought to Patagonia, and 100 of our local students experienced the trauma-informed exhibit in tandem with a structured curriculum developed by Gale Hall, a retired early childhood educator (and quilter!). In one of the activities, Gale asked our students to draw heartfelt messages of welcome to immigrants on fabric squares. From that collection of fabric squares, Gale created the original eight Welcome Quilts that went on to be part of the Welcome Quilt Exhibit that was displayed at the Arizona History Museum in Tucson from May 2023 through April 2024.
Since then, the full exhibit has become the property of the Arizona Historical Society, and we are helping facilitate the exhibit to travel around the country. Recently, it made a stop in Tubac, AZ, at the headquarters of the Border Community Alliance before journeying onward to Eau Claire and Janesville, WI. We are currently in conversation with other communities in WI who are interested in hosting the exhibit this winter. These exhibits are more "seeds", helping the idea take root across the country, inspiring individuals and groups to create and display their own Welcome Quilts and make them visible to migrants, asylum seekers, and refugees in their communities. In addition, this fall, Voices spearheaded an initiative called Welcome Quilts, made by folks in Arizona, Louisiana, and Texas, which were gifted to the Haitian community in Springfield, Ohio.
The larger umbrella of the Welcome Quilt Project presents an opportunity for an essential public counter-narrative to the current hostile rhetoric about migration and those who migrate. Instead of fearing or demonizing them, this project helps create a feeling of community and belonging for these newcomers. Utilizing the symbolic warmth of handmade quilts, it welcomes them as future neighbors, friends, and integral members of their communities. It is also a project in which anyone, anywhere, can participate. And that, dear readers, is precisely the point. In the past few years, Americans ranging in age from 3-99, from over 16 different states (and Japan!), have participated in the Welcome Quilt Project, which now includes a Toolkit containing the empathy and belonging-based curriculum that is easily implemented for children and adults alike (and with or without the presence of the exhibit) along with several other resources that help create meaningful dialogue about immigration.
There are many opportunities to be involved in the Welcome Quilt Project. If you are interested in exploring possibilities to bring this project or the exhibit to your community, please email Gale at welcomehomequilts@gmail.com for brainstorming and details.
Stay tuned for ongoing updates about this developing project in 2025!
These newsletters contain information about the project and exhibit from our back pages: HERE and HERE.
This newsletter spotlights Eau Claire and includes how we used the Welcome Quilt Project to show support for the Haitian community in Springfield, OH.
As we turn the page into 2025, our commitment to building the Voices community and network and to being the change we wish to see in the world burns bright. The hundreds of families and individuals we've been able to help throughout the last six years have been possible because of your generous donations and countless hours of volunteer service. Together, we have changed moments, and some of those moments last a lifetime (including our own). This is a testament to the power of compassion in action, and we thank you from the bottom - and the top! - of our hearts.
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