Bridge Conference 2019

Youth will find and practice empowerment as diasporic bodies and identities within the US. Participants to understand the importance and power of storytelling; empowerment around story-of-self sharing, and learning the ownership of stories and narratives; Deconstructing narratives that harm our communities and having agency/passing the fear-barrier of vocalizing our stories and take up physical, emotional and airtime space to do so. Using an outline, students will write a story about a time in your life that was particularly challenging. The story will have three parts: The obstacle, what it took to overcome the obstacle, and what they learned about yourself after doing it. Youth will have the option of sharing if they would like (recognizing that some youth won’t feel comfortable sharing for a variety of reasons). Using the stories as a launching off point, start a discussion around how much their identity impacted the course of their story. Then have them deconstruct what it means to have an intersectional identity.