John Brown Lives! (JBL!) launched its “Freedom Story Project” website during the first-ever Adirondack Family Book Festival at the John Brown Farm State Historic Site.
Freedom Story Project uses the OurStoryBridge methodology, making stories easily accessible and shareable. One of its goals is to inspire younger generations to tell their stories and connect to their communities and these issues, including through powerful personal narratives by elders who share their experiences.
To ensure the success of this new initiative, JBL! has partnered with OurStoryBridge, a free tool kit for producing a crowdsourced story project collecting and sharing a community’s unique history online. OurStoryBridge supports the creation of three-to five-minute, locally created audio stories with related photographs, as well as their online accessibility, by posting them on a website that appeals to both young and old and can be produced at low cost.
The Freedom Story Project website includes stories such as “My Ancestor, Harriet Tubman,” “The Underground Railroad in the North Country,” “John Brown: Adirondacker” and “The Memorial Field for Black Lives.”
The first story for the Freedom Story Project — “The Fight for Freedom Is Never Over” — was collected on April 24th from Sasha Shekhter, a native of Kyiv, Ukraine.
John Brown Lives! is a freedom education and human rights project that amplifies the lessons and legacies of the past to inform and inspire civic action and the creation of a just and livable community.
Illustration of John Brown courtesy John Brown Lives!.
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