THE ARAB AMERICAN YOUTH NARRATIVES COLLECTIVE
Connecting students with their story.
Among Arab American communities across the country, one thing stands out: older generations and younger generations rarely interact enough. Despite having decades of wisdom and a deep-rooted history no matter how recently they immigrated, there is little opportunity for older members to commemorate that going into the future.
The Arab American Youth Narratives Collective aims to tackle this issue. By partnering high school students with community members—supplemented by a guided curriculum and resources on oral history collection—AAYNC bridges the major gap between generations.
AAYNC is currently working on finding community partners to host in-person and virtual workshops. If you or an organization you know might be interested, please fill out this form.
Resources coming soon!
Program Overview
AAYNC aims to support the Arab American community in 2 main ways:
Connecting Arab American youth with members of the older generation to cultivate intergenerational relationships and preserve community histories.
Increasing the volume of Arab American content present in the collections of our partner organizations, which tend to lack resources on the community’s rich stories and deep-rooted contributions.
Our 4-Step Model
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Students attend AAYNC workshops to learn how to collect oral histories and are sent home with a packet of resources detailing specific steps.
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Students reach out to an assigned or self-found interviewee and set up a time to conduct the oral history. From there, they lead and record their individual interviews.
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Teams of students, including the students who worked to record, transcribe each interview to offer a second, more accessible format.
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Interviews are donated by AAYNC to repositories such as the Massachusetts Historical Society’s collections to bolster the volume of Arab American representation.
Interested in joining?
As part of AAYNC, not only will you become closer with your community, but you’ll have access to a network of other high school students who are passionate about the same issues. It doesn’t hurt that you’ll also receive service hours for every activity you do related to the Collective, including work done from home.
