CAC Mentorship

Densho

Densho documents the testimonies of Japanese Americans who were unjustly incarcerated during World War II before their memories are extinguished. We offer these irreplaceable firsthand accounts, coupled with historical images and teacher resources, to explore principles of democracy and promote equal justice for all. Densho was started as a nonprofit in 1996, with the initial goal of documenting oral histories from Japanese Americans who were incarcerated during World War II. This evolved into a mission to educate, preserve, collaborate and inspire action for equity. Densho uses digital technology to preserve and make accessible primary source materials on the World War II incarceration of Japanese Americans. We present these materials and related resources for their historic value and as a means of exploring issues of democracy, intolerance, wartime hysteria, civil rights and the responsibilities of citizenship in our increasingly global society.

Mentorship offerings: digital archiving, educational outreach, community engagement, media relations, and digital media strategies

Interference Archive

Interference Archive explores the relationship between cultural production and social movements. This work manifests in an open stacks archival collection, publications, a study center, and public programs including exhibitions, workshops, talks, and screenings, all of which encourage critical and creative engagement with the rich history of social movements. As an all-volunteer organization, all members of our community are welcome and encouraged to shape our collection and programming; we are a space for all volunteers to learn from each other and develop new skills. We work in collaboration with like-minded projects, and encourage critical as well as creative engagement with our own histories and current struggles.

Mentorship offerings: volunteer management, fundraising, community engagement

SAADA

SAADA (the South Asian American Digital Archive) documents, preserves, and shares stories of South Asian Americans, ensuring that today’s struggles for inclusion, representation, and belonging are not the same struggles we leave to the next generation. SAADA’s collection of more than 4,500 items is the largest publicly accessible South Asian American archive, enabling academics, artists, filmmakers, journalists, students, and community members to write books, create new content, and shape public understanding about the South Asian American community. SAADA is at the forefront of pioneering a distributed, post-custodial, community-driven approach to archival collecting. For SAADA, archival work is done by, with, and for our community. From a budget of just $300 when the organization started in 2008, SAADA now maintains annual revenue of more than a half-million dollars. SAADA’s innovative approach has been recognized with awards from the Society of American Archivists and the American Historical Association and grants from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Institute of Museum and Library Services, National Historical Publications & Records Commission, and Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, among others. SAADA’s work has also been highlighted by The New York Times, The Atlantic, NPR, and other national and international media. 

Mentorship offerings: non-profit management, fundraising and grant writing, digital and post-custodial archiving practices

Texas After Violence Project

Texas After Violence Project (TAVP) is a community-based archive and documentary project cultivating deeper understandings of the impacts of state-sanctioned violence on individuals, families, and communities. Our mission is to conduct responsible, inclusive, and ethical research, and to build an archive of stories and other materials that shift narrative power to marginalized and oppressed communities and promote restorative and transformative justice. We preserve the voices, experiences, and perspectives of people directly impacted by violence in Texas and have conducted hundreds of hours of interviews with people directly impacted, offer trainings on a range of topics, including conducting trauma-informed oral history interviews, planning community-based documentation/archival projects, and creating digital multimedia for social change, and collaborate with storytellers, artists, activists, filmmakers, and writers to share stories and other materials from our archive with our broader communities in creative and compelling ways.

Mentorship offerings: ethical documentation practices, oral history methodology, trauma-informed interviewing, digital archiving