Light, oh where is the light!
Let not the hours pass by in the dark.
Kindle the lamp of love with thy life.
– Rabindranath Tagore –
– Rabindranath Tagore –
Sakshi Storytelling
A South Asian Collective Healing Initiative
Sakshi means ‘witness’ in many South Asian languages. At Sakshi Storytelling–a South Asian Collective Healing Initiative–we bear witness to your story. Read on to know more.
A South Asian Collective Healing Initiative
Sakshi means ‘witness’ in many South Asian languages.
At Sakshi Storytelling–a South Asian Collective Healing Initiative–we bear witness to your story. We bear witness to your strength, your resolve, and also your vulnerabilities.
We use multidisciplinary storytelling–through personal narratives, art, poetry–as a tool to explore subjects that have been unacknowledged and stigmatized in South Asian immigrant and refugee communities.
As you explore, grow, evolve, tumble through the process, it turns into a deep form of healing and self care.
We also help you recognize and take charge of your personal narrative, your story that you tell yourself, that you tell the world about yourself.
This initiative is led and curated by Pooja Garg and supported by a fellowship and a grant from the University of South California Annenberg School of Journalism and Communication Studies. We are committed to offering trauma-informed and safe storytelling workshops and spaces that encourage nurturing and growth.
Read on to know more!
Our Process
The participants are invited to be a part of online and in-person listening circles and storytelling workshops.
We are committed to offering safe, inclusive, and trauma-informed spaces for sharing their stories and to help them explore and develop their personal narratives of challenge, growth, and change. At every step of the way, the participants are offered support that keeps them grounded and centered.
We are also committed to the privacy of the participants.
The participants are under no obligation to publish their stories. They can retain their stories as empowering personal landmarks to return to in their journey.
Our Vision
Healing
As we share these stories, our hope is to create a space of healing and care for participants. We are committed to offering safe, inclusive, and trauma-informed spaces for sharing.
Building Awareness
Our hope is also for these stories to help create awareness and destigmatize topics that remain taboo and unacknowledged. We hope that through highlighting these issues, we can help break the intergenerational cycle of trauma and help our communities live without fear and shame.
Identity
As immigrants, our stories are repositories of our culture, our historical narratives, our resilience, and our search for representation in our adopted country. Through sharing stories, our hope is to create a space for connectedness and belonging.
Support for Our Initiative
In our vision, we have been supported by our allies, advocates, researchers, mentors, practitioners, and community organizations.
We are very grateful to:
USC Annenberg
Raksha
Cobb County Domestic Violence Taskforce
South Asian SOAR
National Resource Center on Domestic Violence
Why is This Important to Me?
The participants are invited to be a part of online and in-person listening circles and storytelling workshops where we offer safe, inclusive, and trauma-informed spaces to share their stories and to help them explore and develop their personal narratives of challenge, growth, and change.
As we share these stories, our hope is to create a space of healing and care for participants. Our hope is also for these stories to help create awareness and destigmatize topics that remain unacknowledged.
At every step of the way, the participants are offered support that keeps them grounded and centered.
We are also committed to the privacy of the participants.
The participants are under no obligation to publish their stories. They can be personal landmarks for them to return to in their journey.
We see you. Welcome.
WHAT THE PARTICIPANTS ARE SAYING
Storytelling Workshop with Sakshi helped me explore new avenues for internal growth. Thank you, Pooja!
– Uma B.
Healing through Storytelling : A South Asian Collective Initiative 