Mission: To share the stories and ideas of young adults from all over the world in order to educate, inspire, and spark conversations
Tales From Where We Come From is premised on two simple ideas.
1. Everyone has stories and ideas worth sharing. Whether bursting at the seams to come out, or buried deep inside, all of us, in the simple act of living, accumulate stories, ideas and experiences that can educate, empower and inspire those around us.
2.Sharing these stories and ideas has a wide range of benefits. Those who share stories inevitably grow as communicators, and can become powerful educators to others, while those who listen to them can gain new insights and ways of understanding the world.
Tales From Where We Come From focuses specifically on stories and ideas related to national and cultural identity. In this project, I am interviewing students from all around the world about their home countries and about what home means to them, and then producing audio stories and pieces about them, their experiences, and their ideas. Each individual piece provides a glimpse into a different world and society, while the pieces, taken together, will illuminate a great deal about history, culture, and ways of thinking from all around the world, through the voices and ideas of the students who have participated in this project.
I am doing this project embedded within different communities. I will be spending time throughout this year at 6 different United World College schools, international boarding schools for 16 to 19 year olds, working with students from their student bodies. The schools I'll be working with are in Canada, Hong Kong, Germany, the Netherlands, Wales and the United States, and their student bodies are truly global in composition, and I hope in the future to work with more international communities to share the richness of their stories.
The hope is that in each community that I work with, the stories that are shared give the community the opportunity to learn more about the members within it, thereby fostering deeper connections, and sparking conversations and dialogue.
At the same time, the hope is that these stories will also get shared well beyond the walls of the communities from which they come, elevating the tremendously rich and insightful voices of the young adults from all around the world who have shared them, in a way that enriches them, while at the same time, enriching the lives of all those who get the pleasure of learning from their stories.
I envision this project as a perpetually growing one, and am interested in different ways of broadening it and developing it, so if you have suggestions, certainly reach out. I hope you learn alot from this website, and as I say at the end of the audio stories that I produce, I hope you enjoy learning about the world through the fascinating people that comprise it.
Ari Satok