In December 2007, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), One Laptop per Child (OLPC), and Google launched a joint initiative to preserve and share the histories and identities of cultures around the world by making personal stories available online in many languages. Using laptops, mobile phones, and other recording devices, children record, in their native languages, the stories of elders, family members, and friends. These stories are being shared globally through the Our Stories website, where they can be found on a Google Map. By making these stories accessible around the world, the Our Stories project hopes to contribute to a better understanding of our shared humanity across countries and cultures, across religious traditions, across languages, and across generations. The ultimate goal is to preserve an oral history of humanity in the 21st Century.
This initiative draws on information and communication technologies (ICTs) to help young people around the world learn more about each other, to promote dialogue across borders and cultures, and to give young people a voice on a wide range of issues. Low-cost "XO" laptops from OLPC (click here to learn more about this tool for sharing and collaboration) are serving as a foundation to help build this digital archive of personal stories by providing children in developing countries with what is intended to be easy-to-use technology to record their stories and interviews.
Specifically, the Our Stories website offers interview guides specific to both students and adults, as well as a sister site specifically geared toward children. Based on these resources, young people from countries around the world have undertaken interviews, which anyone can watch/listen to by using an interactive, Google-produced map (or, one may use a pull-down list to find available stories by collection/country). These stories can be heard in their native languages, just as they were spoken by the storytellers.
Children, Youth, Intercultural Relations.
Our Stories was inspired by the United-States-based StoryCorps® project.
Organisers emphasise that "[i]t's never too early to teach the power and joy of true communication. Encourage even the quietest voices to speak up – to ask, and answer questions. Teachers can help students by giving them the opportunity to practice their interview skills, and by assisting in identifying people to interview, topics to discuss, and questions to ask. Teachers can show their students that listening is an act of love - and an act of learning. It empowers children and gives them a voice through self-expression and participation, one story at a time."
UNICEF, OLPC, Google.