to be (un)told
i'm looking for stories of the lives of african, southeast asian, and south american children.
i've been looking for three hours.
i've found 4.
what i've found hundreds of are children's stories from these areas.
apparently, a story written by J. Smith about a playful Monkey is a story "to be told," and a life lost to hunger - 29,000/day - is not to be told.
those stories that i have found are one paragraph of information on the child's life before x charity came and offered hope. this is beautiful, but seriously, what about the other 28,999 children? couldn't there something beautiful in telling stories of children - even if it doesn't end up helping them? sure, that's not enough. it is grossly not enough. but, still, simply to tell a person's story in honor of that person - this seems an upholding of the imago dei in children whose lives have not been celebrated.
mars hill students: what if we planned a trip to aftica either in january or next summer with the purpose of setting up a website that honors the stories of african children? would anyone be interested in that?
9 comments:
becky,
i know that it is not africa but i have a book from the holocaust which are the stories and art of many children who didn't survive. i would be interested in going maybe on the basis of writing such a book. we could also document the journey on film...thoughts
let's not make it a book...and if we do film, let's make it available for free on the internet!
i'd love for a kid to be able to come home from school, be surfing the internet and find a story that connects him/her to someone else and in that honors the person.
does that make sense?
besides, who would publish our book...we're chics. :)
the reason why i think a book would be good is that, as a child seeing this book that i am thinking of was very impacful. to look at the pictures and stories and then to read the end and find that almost all of these beautiful children my age died.
plus we want to encourage the continued reading of books!
as for us being chicks ah well i don't have a creative solution to that one but since it's about children then they might publish i mean we're not talking about church.
:P
becky,
you may want to get in touch with Abby Wong at mhgs. she spent some time in Uganda this year and is hoping to do her counseling internship there. she has a huge heart for what you are talking about.
here is her blog from her trip. www.abbyinafrica.blogspot.com
and her email:
abbymwong@yahoo.com
cheers,
bryan
I am an incoming student to mhgs in fall '06, and I have loved reading your blog over the past few months. I think the trip is a great idea!
There is an organization that has voice recording kits that they loan out (with a hefty refundable deposit), along with a list of questions, to help people record their stories. They then put the stories on their website so people around the world can hear each other's stories. Unfortunately, I can't think of the name off the top of my head, but I read about in the book A Whole New Mind by Daniel Pink.
I will look it up tonight and post it here for you.
Blessings.
thanks everyone for all the awesome ideas!
i've been feeling called to go to zambia..but didn't know what for...maybe this is it.
let's keep dreaming until dreaming can become planning. january term? next summer?
Check out...
www.storycorps.net
And this one might even be something that would be able to provide resources for your vision:
www.storycenter.org
thanks sarah! that looks exciting.
are you in seattle now? are you moving here? what program are you in?
I will be moving in July or August from Phoenix. I will be in the M.Div. program or the "femDiv" program as Meredith informed me on my last visit!
See you soon!
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