Partnership & Testimonial

Partnerships & Testimonials

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Exploring Identity

Teen Voices, 2025-6

Casa San Jose collaborated with Sharing Our Story. Dianna Navarrete coordinated Casa San Jose’s particiption

The "Exploring Identity: Teen Voices Project" is both a powerful and beautiful storytelling experience that challenges teens to explore within themselves, silence their fears of expression and speaking out, and allow the public to hear what they have to say with their own voices. Through raw honesty and creativity, they pulled back the curtain on their lives, sharing the fears, passions, desires, and dreams that define them. They didn’t just participate — they became poets, writers, video editors, and storytellers, owning every moment of the process. Casa San Jose was proud to have two of our exceptionally talented teens stand up and represent the richness of Hispanic/Latino culture to the Pittsburgh community.

The “Exploring Identity: Teen Voices Project” is both a powerful and beautiful storytelling experience that challenges teens to explore within themselves, silence their fears of expression and speaking out, and allow the public to hear what they have to say with their own voices. Through raw honesty and creativity, they pulled back the curtain on their lives, sharing the fears, passions, desires, and dreams that define them. They didn’t just participate — they became poets, writers, video editors, and storytellers, owning every moment of the process. Casa San Jose was proud to have two of our exceptionally talented teens stand up and represent the richness of Hispanic/Latino culture to the Pittsburgh community.

Three children jumping in burlap sacks during a race.

Sally Rafson reached out to BCAP with her Digital Stories Project in 2016. I became her first participant from our community in the pilot project and did my digital story which was then used for promotional purposes for her full project later.

It became clear that stories told through a digital video were a powerful tool to understand people from diverse ethnic backgrounds. The program brought together people from among the new Pittsburgh residents and old time residents where stories were told, video recorded and shared with project-end celebrations. We got to get the tastes of different ethnic foods too.

Such sharing of stories,I felt, would ease hostility among people of different ethnic groups and among others. Also, great stories get lost in time, if not recorded in some form, and the digital stories just did that great work.

It was a pleasure to be a part of the project for myself as well as for the community as a whole. It was very rewarding too.

I am thankful to Sally for bringing that wonderful project to our region.

Mr.Khara Timsina

Executive Director, BCAP

March 1, 2024

I’ve worked with Sally for 5 years on 4 or 5 iterations of the Sharing Our Story project and I’ve been impressed every time. The workshops are structured to give the participants plenty of time to get to know each other and feel comfortable working together, in addition to the time it takes to teach the hard skills of using technology and crafting their stories. Sally and her team care about the people they work with and genuinely want to hear their stories.

The public presentations of the workshop could be as simple as introductory remarks and screening the videos, but Sally makes sure to find moderators, interpreters if needed, and other cultural performances related to the community.

The presentations always draw large crowds, both friends and family of the people in the workshops, and interested community members. The whole program, from workshop to presentation, is unique and a valuable community resource.

Alexis Jabour

Senior Production Manager

City of Asylum

Pittsburgh, PA

March 11, 2024

The parish of St. Vladimir Ukrainian Orthodox Church had an excellent experience working with Sharing Our Story as part of their “I Am Ukraine” storytelling project. Sally Rafson, Founder of Sharing Our Story, reached out to me to collaborate on the I Am Ukraine project with Sharing Our Story, Ukrainian Cultural and Humanitarian Institute, City of Asylum, Jewish Family and Community Services and the JCC Center for Lovingkindness and Civic Engagement. This project brought together Pittsburghers of Ukrainian descent, many of whom are our parishioners, and recent Ukrainian refugees and immigrants.

In well-structured and impactful workshops, the Sharing Our Story staff and volunteers provided direction for the participants. My parishioners, who offered their individual digital stories focused on their Ukrainian identity, commented how they were able to overcome anxiety about their ability to create a well-crafted story. They were happy their concerns were allayed by the wonderful staff’s support. Sharing Our Story not only helped the participants with practical aspects of digital storytelling, they helped participants to see that all stories are worth telling.

This timely project came at a time when the Ukrainian war's impact on our community members is significant. I saw this as one means to help alleviate people’s stress and spread knowledge of Ukrainian culture to the wider community and this was confirmed in the comments I received from participants after the presentations.

I assisted in the process by communicating with my parish to recruit people for the program, connecting Sally with other resources in the local Ukrainian community and offering transportation to one of the refugees. Sally handled all of the marketing materials, coordination of the workshops, and instruction for the videos, making it easy to participate without feeling overwhelmed.

The impactful videos that were created were then used in 3 public discussion events highlighting Ukrainian culture. I was happy to facilitate one of these at my parish, St. Vladimir Ukrainian Orthodox Church. The events, again managed and organized by Sharing Our Story, were well attended with a total close to 400 people across the three events. Featuring the videos created in the workshops, they also included traditional Ukrainian food that brought people together, and authentic Ukrainian dance. The personal responses from my congregation and others in the Ukrainian community were exceptional. It was a meaningful and educational experience for all. Most importantly, the project’s design for public education, and to help connect refugees and Pittsburghers of Ukrainian descent was accomplished.

Sharing Our Story was the lead in designing and executing the project. I am grateful that they brought me into the collaboration to accomplish this. I plan to use this experience to encourage my contacts in Ukrainian communities in other cities to create their own projects.

Very Rev. John Haluszczak

Pastor

St Volodymyr Ukrainian Orthodox Church

Pittsburgh Pa.

February 26, 2024

Dear Sally,

I am so glad that we had the opportunity to partner with you on the Sharing our Story: I am Ukraine event held at the JCC of Greater Pittsburgh in January 2024. Your vision for the power of storytelling was evident from our first planning meeting and throughout the entire process. I was impressed with the visioning, the workshop preparation, the production of the videos, and the execution of the event. I was among 150 neighbors who learned more about the journeys of our Ukrainian neighbors than I ever thought that I would learn. The addition of Ukrainian music, dance, arts, and food, made the experience a community building experience.

Thank you for including me and the community in this exceptional community building project. I can’t wait to hear about your next Sharing our Story project.

Ron

Rabbi Ron Symons (he/his/him)

Senior Director of Jewish Life

Director, Center for Loving Kindness

JCC of Greater Pittsburgh

5738 Forbes Ave.

Pittsburgh, PA 15217

Dear Sally,

Thank you for including me and the community in this exceptional community building project. I can’t wait to hear about your next Sharing our Story project.

Ron

Rabbi Ron Symons (he/his/him)

Senior Director of Jewish Life

Director, Center for Loving Kindness

JCC of Greater Pittsburgh

5738 Forbes Ave.

Pittsburgh, PA 15217

03/31/2021

The Somali Bantu Community Association of Pittsburgh

305 34TH Street

Pittsburgh, PA 15201

Building Bridges’ Welcoming the Stranger

Sharing Our Story’s Partnership

The U.S discriminatory immigration ban on Muslim refugees that targeted specific countries with majority Muslim population and Somalia been one of the earliest countries religiously and politically targeted had affected our local Somali community in Pittsburgh interactions with the larger Pittsburgh community. Members of our community and in particular women have faced many discriminatory challenges as result of the ban’s associated discriminatory language, and in addition the whole Somali Community went through faith, ethnicity, and nationality-based isolations, and fears.

Our collaborative work with Sharing our Story on the ‘’Welcoming the Stranger’’ Building Bridges project brought together the local Somali community with other neighborhood-based communities, youth-based groups, and faith-based community to build the bridge of trust, and to create a welcoming environment through inclusive dialogs, and through common shared stories.

The project has indeed yielded together a diverse group of people from different faiths, cultural, nationalities backgrounds and different ages. The prerecorded video story sharing has remained as a significance tool that remind us our common shared strength as a community as result of our common shared struggles that continues to define who we are today.

Despite the national politicized faith and racial based challenges; we have seen interactive dialogs among neighbors of all cultural backgrounds, faiths, and a healthy relationship that continues to these days.

Aweys Mwaliya

Executive Director

Somali Bantu Community Association of Pittsburgh

305 34TH Street

Pittsburgh, PA 15201

Building Bridges’ Welcoming the Stranger

Sharing Our Story’s Partnership

Aweys Mwaliya

Executive Director

Somali Bantu Community Association of Pittsburgh

My testimonial about Sharing Our Story, part of the Shaping Communities Project.

The recruitment phase of the project was the first part of the project. We at Casa San Jose talked to some members individually to let them know about the project and how they would contribute by their participation in a larger vision of Community. It is quite a commitment that we were asking of our members since they live with concerns for their safety and security and we were asking them to reveal themselves.

Secondly, the phase of the workshops was in itself a Community building exercise since those who participated gained understanding and empathy for one another. Most of them had not met one another prior to this exercise.

The actual production of the videos was realized with the support of interpreters and the people who shared their stories felt honored and acknowledged for taking this step.

The public event was met with great excitement. We were spreading the word in our neighborhood hoping that members of the community would join the event and listen to the stories. There were encouraging numbers of persons who attended and gave great feedback about the significance of the stories.

For our community of Beechview it was an opportunity for mutual understanding and compassion. The presenters felt connected to one another and the viewers gained awareness and insight. It was a great unifying project and very timely at this moment in history when we seem to be so divided over the question of immigration.

Submitted by

Sister Janice Vanderneck

Casa San Jose

June 1, 2021