"The group was very diverse in age and ethnicity. It (the workshop) was an excellent avenue to gain valuable skills and be creative, and the teachers were excellent. I loved everyone's stories and having good quality software and hardware at my fingertips. I really liked the way you paced and organized the computer tutorials; complicated information was conveyed in a clear manner."

"The teacher who assisted me in recording my story was also my witness during our session, and she created a container of safety for me to tell my story. I remember what it felt like to walk out of the recording room that day. I felt different, like I'd found some resolution to something I never thought I'd get resolution from. My story in my own voice. Wow, my experience will be taken seriously now; I'll finally be heard."

"I can't underscore enough how much the coaching meant to me as a participant. I get very anxious around technology, and in fact I needed a lot of personalized attention at times. In no way did any of the teachers make me feel stupid or that I was asking for too much."

In 2004, our then-intern Holly Landsbaum conducted a qualitative study of Silence Speaks as research for her Masters in Social Work. She interviewed a small group of participants from selected workshops and identified five core themes that were common for most respondents:

“First, the group process provided a sense of connection, support, and validation. Second, creating a digital story provided an opportunity for new forms of self-expression leading to new and meaningful insights. Third, participants felt able to challenge the silencing effect their experiences of violence had had on them, which allowed them to claim or reclaim aspects of their selves. Fourth, the process engendered feelings of pride and satisfaction for participants. Finally, sharing their completed digital stories with others led participants to feel a sense of social agency whereby they believed their digital stories impacted or had the potential to impact viewers. The results reveal that the Silence Speaks model shares much in common with group work and empowerment-based social work practice.”

Note: Limited resources have made it difficult to adequately document the many impacts of creating and viewing Silence Speaks stories. While we do our best to use brief surveys and group discussions to evaluate participants’ experiences in workshops, we have thus far lacked funding to conduct a large-scale study of how digital stories can function as skill-building tools, promote dialogue and focused action for justice, or influence decision makers and leaders to introduce, enact, or enforce specific policies related to health and human rights. We are hoping to explore these impacts in future work. For information about research / evaluation efforts currently underway, please This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .