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The Power of Storytelling

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Healing Story Alliance Inc

LXCL:Healing Story Alliance supports storytelling as a healing art. We provide dynamic programming and online resources to promote the healing of self, community, society, and the Earth. We welcome anyone into our circle who is interested in the healing power of story to bring about positive change.&nbsp;

You are invited to join the Friends of Healing Story Alliance, a group of monthly donors who help support HSA&#39;s unique free programming such as OARS in the Water, Kind Stories in Concert, and the Social Justice in Action Series. Healing Story Alliance Inc. is a not for profit organization dedicated to storytelling as a healing art. Our dynamic online concerts, workshops, and community gatherings focus on healing the self, community, society, and the Earth.&nbsp;&nbsp;Thank you for supporting our mission with a monthly donation. Your continuing support makes our free programming possible!&nbsp;

You are invited to join the Friends of Healing Story Alliance, a group of monthly donors who help support HSA's unique free programming such as OARS in the Water, Kind Stories in Concert, and the Social Justice in Action Series. Healing Story Alliance Inc. is a not for profit organization dedicated to storytelling as a healing art. Our dynamic online concerts, workshops, and community gatherings focus on healing the self, community, society, and the Earth. Thank you for supporting our mission with a monthly donation. Your continuing support makes our free programming possible!

The Friends of Healing Story Alliance

About the WorkshopIn this experiential workshop, Merna Hecht will share stories from her many years of working with immigrant and refugee youth and highlight the resilience, strength and deep humanity that issues from the &nbsp;poems and visual art they create to tell their own stories &nbsp;in their own voices. Speaking to both the anguish and trauma of forced migration and the complex reasons that are root causes, she will also emphasize the particular and distinctive flavors and intimate details of landscape, people, language and place-bound culture that thousands of people of all ages are forced to leave. Her presentation will include a very brief overview of the dramatic changes in current U.S. refugee &nbsp;and immigration policies and the harmful narratives that accompany them.Bring your pen and paper because Merna will offer poems and prompts that invite all who attend to &ldquo;put their hearts on the page&rdquo; and explore their own sense of home and their reflections on gestures of welcome and community engagement on behalf of refugees and immigrants. About the ArtistMerna Ann Hecht is a well- known storyteller, a NSN Brimstone Award recipient, &nbsp;a teaching artist, poet, and longtime human rights activist. In 2009, she founded the Stories of Arrival: Refugee and Immigrant Youth Voices Poetry Project at Foster High School in Tukwila, Washington, one of the most culturally diverse schools in the U.S. The project has received national recognition for creating a broader public awareness of refugee and immigrant stories through presentations, exhibition and the publication of anthologies featuring her students&rsquo; poetry and artwork. She continues similar projects through Word Travels: Bringing Refugee and Immigrant Voices to the Community. Merna is also a passionate cook and baker and a dedicated organic gardener who works to promote food justice through collaborative endeavors with refugee women chefs and the International Rescue Committee&rsquo;s New Roots program. A longtime resident of Vashon Island, WA, Merna was the 2017-19 Vashon Poet Laureate. She lives with her husband on a small organic blueberry farm.<a fr-original-style="" href="https://www.mernahecht.com/" id="isPasted" rel="nofollow" style="text-decoration-color: currentcolor; user-select: auto; box-sizing: inherit;" target="_blank">https://www.mernahecht.com/</a><a fr-original-style="" href="https://teachersandwritersmagazine.org/no-one-knows-you-until-they-hear-your-story/" rel="nofollow" style="text-decoration-color: currentcolor; user-select: auto; box-sizing: inherit;" target="_blank">https://teachersandwritersmagazine.org/no-one-knows-you-until-they-hear-your-story/</a>

Putting Your Heart on the Page: Honoring Refugee and Immigrant Voices through Poetry, Storytelling and Visual Art

Join the Healing Story Alliance for a special gathering to share and explore stories of social justice in action in its many faces and forms. Through folk tales and personal stories, we will dive deeply into multiple experiences of justice in action. The Storytelling concert is followed by a community conversation.Can&#39;t attend in person? No problem!A recording of the concert will be made available to all registrants.&nbsp;&nbsp;About the Storytellers&nbsp;Sheila Arnold has a talent for storytelling, a passion for history, and compassion for people. &nbsp;She provides Storytelling, Historic Characters, Christian Monologues, and Professional Development for schools, festivals, churches, and organizations nationally and internationally. &nbsp;She is co-founder and Artistic Director of Artists Standing Strong Together (ASST), a source of inspiration, strength, and action in the storytelling and artists&#39; world. Sheila has been honored as a 2021 MacDowell Artist Fellow, a 2020 Mt. Vernon Research Fellow, and a 2019 Hewnoaks Artist Colony summer residence Noted Artist. &nbsp;Sheila lives in Hampton, VA, near her son&rsquo;s family and parents.&nbsp;For this Social Justice in Action Concert Sheila Arnold will present a historic character presentation based on the life of Fanny Lou Hammer!&nbsp;About Fanny Lou Hamer:Fannie Lou Hamer famously said &ldquo;I&rsquo;m sick and tired of being sick and tired&rdquo;She was an American voting rights activist and civil rights leader. She was instrumental in organizing Mississippi Freedom Summer for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and later became the Vice-Chair of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, attending the 1964 Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey, in that capacity. Her plain-spoken manner and fervent belief in the Biblical righteousness of her cause gained her a reputation as an electrifying speaker and constant champion of civil rights. &nbsp;From her days as a sharecropper to her violent entrance into being a full-citizen in the country, her story will charge students to stand and become active in our government and the causes of those neglected and overlooked.&nbsp;Norah Dooley is a performing storyteller, educator, children&#39;s author, and project director of StoriesLive.org. From Boston to Tokyo, and from San Francisco to Tanzania, Norah has been teaching people of all ages and stages of life the importance of knowing and telling their stories. While organizing an adjunct union at Lesley University, she also helped revitalize the Climate Justice Committee of her union local, SEIU 509, and was once arrested trying to stop construction of the West Roxbury Lateral Pipeline in Boston by jumping into a trench in front of an excavator. In 2024, she was a founding member of AllAreNeighbors.com, an immigrant support group in Central Massachusetts.EMCEESusan O&rsquo;Halloran has been seen on PBS Nightline and in the New York Times. The Chicago Reader&nbsp;says Susan O&#39;Halloran &quot;has mastered the Irish art of telling stories that are funny and heart-wrenching at the same time.&quot; This author of 10 books has been a featured teller at the National Storytelling Festival and the International Storytelling Center Residencies and has served as a National Storytelling Network keynote speaker. Sue also offers live seminars and online classes to nonprofits and corporations. In 2012, Sue produced the first-ever online storytelling festival, where 112,000 people from 52 countries participated. <a fr-original-style="" href="http://www.susanohalloran.com/" style="text-decoration-color: currentcolor; user-select: auto; box-sizing: inherit;" target="_blank">www.SusanOHalloran.com</a>

Healing Story Alliance Inc

Healing Story Alliance Inc

Events

Events

Putting Your Heart on the Page: Honoring Refugee and Immigrant Voices through Poetry, Storytelling and Visual Art

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Social Justice in Action Concert December 6th

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The Friends of Healing Story Alliance

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