Voices and Faces Project member Michelle Lugalia during a moderated advocacy training.

Our stories are our power.
We’re using them to create change.

The Voices and Faces Project is an award-winning non-profit storytelling initiative created to bring the names, faces, and testimonies of survivors of gender-based violence to the attention of the public. Through our educational and advocacy trainings, our survivor story archives (housed at The Voices and Faces Project and World Without Exploitation), and our signature program, The Stories We Tell – an immersive, two-day testimonial writing workshop for survivors of sexual violence, intimate partner violence, and trafficking – we seek to change minds, hearts, and public policies through the power of personal testimony.

We believe that stories aren’t just found. They are cultivated. Those who choose to share them need to be encouraged, listened to, developed, and supported if their voices are to have an enduring effect on public attitudes and policies. The well-told story creates the space for the world to better understand the damage gender-based violence does to victims, families and communities. It breaks through partisan barriers in a way that statistics alone cannot. But our stories, strategically and mindfully told, do something more: They call the world not just to compassion, but social action. And action is what The Voices and Faces Project is all about.

The Voices and Faces Project has been named one of America’s Best Charities by the board of Independent Charities of America for 10 years running. We are a founding partner of World Without Exploitation, launched in 2016 through our alliance with NOW-NYS, Coalition Against Trafficking in Women, and Sanctuary for Families. We are also co-founders, with Victim Rights Law Center, of CounterQuo – a national coalition created to challenge and change media responses to gender-based violence – and the creators of the award-winning, survivor story-informed Ugly Truth anti-trafficking campaign. The Voices and Faces Project has been a registered 501c3 organization since 2006.

Voices and Faces Project Design Director Nobuko Nagaoka.

Inclusion isn’t just a buzzword.It’s a way of being.

Gender-based violence is non-discriminatory. Wherever you are, and whoever you are, you are vulnerable to it, particularly if you are a woman or girl. And while each of us, regardless of our level of social or economic privilege, is a potential victim of gender-based violence, people from communities that have been historically denied basic civil or human rights are especially vulnerable to such violence. What’s more, victims from these highly vulnerable communities are often denied a basic level of care and support in the wake of experiencing violence. The Voices and Faces Project is always imagining —and creating — new ways and places to support members of marginalized communities in bringing their stories forward.

Meet the voices and faces
behind The Voices and Faces Project.

Anne K. Ream

Founder of The Voices and Faces Project

R. Clifton Spargo

Co-Creator & Workshop Leader of The Stories We Tell

Marline Johnson

The Stories We Tell Youth Program Coordinator

Caity-Shea Violette

Project Writer & Stories We Tell Mentor

Jimmie Briggs

Co-leader, Testimony & Transformation

Katie Feifer

Founding Member, Research Director, & CounterQuo Project Leader

Janet Goldblatt Holmes

The Stories We Tell Outreach Coordinator

Nobuko Nagaoka

Visual Design Director

Christa Desir

Founding Member & The Stories We Tell Mentor

Aimee Bravo Noffsinger

Aimee Bravo-Noffsinger

Founding Member & Theatrical Initiatives Advisor

Kali Casab

Communications Manager

Collaboration is key to success:
Meet our partners and supporters.

Ackerman Institute for the Family
Angel Band Project
Aperture Foundation
Barnard College
Between Friends
Burn and Shiver Consulting
Canadian Centre to End Human Trafficking
Center for Community Solutions
Chicago Alliance Against Sexual Exploitation
Chicago Community Trust
Chicago Recording Company
Chicago Foundation for Women
Comer Family Foundation
Cook County Juvenile Temporary
Detention Center Foundation
Crown Family Philanthropies
 David Lynch Foundation
 Donner Canadian Foundation
Ellie Fund of the Jewish Women’s Foundation of Metropolitan Chicago

Emerson Collective
Goldblatt Family Fund
Illinois Coalition Against Sexual Assault (ICASA)
Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center
Illinois Humanities Council
JCARES
Jewish Museum Milwaukee
Jewish Women’s Foundation of Metropolitan Chicago
Kinetic Worldwide (a WPP Company)
 KGF Insights
 Lakshmi Foundation
 Leo Burnett Company Charitable Foundation
 Little Angel Foundation
 LOTUS Legal Clinic
Loyola University
Macy’s
Manaaki Foundation
 Mount Mary University
Nathan Cummings Foundation
Northwestern University

NoVo Foundation
Polk Bros. Foundation
RefuSHE
Richard H. Driehaus Foundation
Seal Press
 Shepherd’s Counseling Services
 Soroptimist International (a United Nations NGO)
 Stone Ward Advertising
TearFund
 Thomson Reuters
 University of Chicago
 United States Department of Justice
United States Navy
 William H. Donner Foundation
Wisconsin Humanities Council
Verizon Foundation
 Villanova University
 Young Women’s Leadership Charter School of Chicago
 YWCA Chicago
 YWCA Evanston