St. Anthony’s Meet StoryCorps

At the end of August, the St. Anthony Foundation partnered with the oral history project StoryCorps for a day of recording at the Tenderloin Technology Lab. The mission of StoryCorps is simple: to capture the stories and experiences of everyday people in a 40 minute conversation. A copy of the recording is archived at the American Folk Life Center at the Library of Congress so future generations can access them. In a typical StoryCorps conversation, a participant will sit across from someone they are close to: a friend, family member, coworker, team mate , etc. and talk about whatever they want. Important life experiences, the people who have meant the most to them, their biggest regrets and their happiest moments: anything goes.

As a servant of some of the most diverse populations is San Francisco, the St. Anthony Foundation has access to a countless number of personal tales, spanning the spectrum of human experience and emotion. In other words, it’s a perfect place for StoryCorps to work their magic.

As the Program Assistant at the Tenderloin Tech Lab, I have the opportunity to see many of the clients on a daily basis and help them with job related problems and queries, but I’ve never had the chance to sit down with them and listen to their own stories. For these recording sessions, I was able to talk one on one with many of these clients and hear about their lives. Although all of their stories were completely different, they touched upon many of the same themes: love, friendship, regret, loss, and growth. In many cases, I heard parts of my own life in their stories. I was reminded of how important it is to take the time to LISTEN to one another.