Your Voice Matters

“Tu voz importa / Your Voice Matters” is photovoice project with youth and women in Latino farmworker families in Northern California. In partnership with professional researcher and photographer Robyne Hayes, this project will focus on a group of approximately 20 migrants, consisting of a series of educational and experiential workshops that will assist participants in learning how to use the cameras, ultimately being empowered to tell their own stories about their own lives. The project will amplify the unique voices of youth and women by harnessing their artistic abilities to tell their own stories. The outcomes are a series of evocative images and stories that highlight issues that matter most to them, images that will be presented to the community through a public exhibition at a later date.

Through the sharing of images and stories, our project can contribute to changing the current, national narrative of immigrants, moving away from the vilification to instead develop a more compassionate understanding, counteracting the established narrative of "us" versus "them." With these barriers removed, the resilience of the immigrant community can be recognized for the commonality they share with all of us during this exceptionally difficult time.

To that end, our goal is to facilitate pathways for dialogue and action between farmworkers and the community. In order to make this goal a reality, we are asking for your help! Please consider participating in our fundraiser, which will help us secure our remaining materials for instruction, preparation, and exhibition. Every dollar counts.

This collaboration also includes the E Center Migrant Seasonal Head Start, which will serve as the official liaison between MCN and the initiative participants, with Chico State University also providing structural support. This project is similarly being supported through generous contributions from sponsors UCEF - Friends of the Arts, in conjunction with BCAC.tv.

This project was made possible with the support from California Humanities, a nonprofit partner of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Visit calhum.org.