By Holly Wise
LatinaLista
Their voices captivated my storytelling soul last year.
They were more than 67,000 strong in 2014 – children fleeing violence and poverty in their Central American homes, many of them arriving in the United States. The Center for Immigration Studies estimates that 2,000 children have crossed the border every month so far in 2015.
It is their stories we at VoiceBox Media want to tell and through our partnership with Latina Lista, we’re eager to begin.
We need your help to bring this project to life and you can support us by making our first Kickstarter campaign a success!
Through extensive research, investigative reporting and methodical data collection, VoiceBox Media will continue its work of bringing this humanitarian crisis out of the shadows and into mainstream understanding.
This in-depth multimedia reporting project will span at least six months starting September 2015. I will recruit and lead a team of four collegiate fellows. The selected group will undergo a rigorous application and interview process before being accepted for the project. The four fellows will have experience in writing, editing, digital design and audience engagement.
This project will give a thorough examination of the organizations and people working along our borderlands to bring resolution to the social problem in their communities, as well as creating dialogue. We plan to live stream monthly interviews with a combination of families who have been detained, human rights advocates and government officials.
We plan to visit the facilities multiple times. We plan to go to the far-flung deserts they’ve walked through. We will relentlessly research and interview the prison management companies.
We will petition U.S. governmental officials to discuss these issues with us. We will approach Central American governments, and if necessary, we will visit them. We will analyze data, reports and statistics about these immigration and human rights issues. We will become innovative about the best ways to compile and present these stories.
Together, we will see what the children and their families experience and work to put ourselves as close to their circumstances as possible.
Holly Wise teaches journalism at Texas State University in San Marcos, Texas. She is the founder and executive editor of VoiceBox Media – a news service dedicated to telling the stories of people who are making change happen in their communities.
