Dear Friend:

In 2004, when photographer Patricia Evans and I embarked on the journey that became Lived Through This — a book of narrative and photographic portraits of survivors of gender-based violence — I thought our project would be a brief detour from my career as a creative director.

Almost 20 years later, it's clear that I got that spectacularly wrong!

From our early days spent in community with the courageous, groundbreaking survivors of rape and human trafficking we were profiling, it was obvious that our vision — creating a space for those who have lived through gender-based violence to share their names, faces and stories — was far bigger than a book.

So what started as a literary labor of love led to the 2006 founding of The Voices and Faces Project, our award-winning non-profit storytelling project; the 2011 launch of our global Stories We Tell testimonial writing program; and the recent expansion of our work in the form of writing and storytelling workshops for refugee women and girls, migrant and rural essential workers, and formerly and currently incarcerated persons. Along the way, we've been named one of America's Best Charities for 13 years running.

And while The Voices and Faces Project has grown over the years, our reason for being hasn't much changed. We call injustice by its name and call on the world to confront it. We turn pain into possibility through our trauma-informed testimonial writing programs. And we learn from history while seeking to change history, one powerful, purposeful narrative at a time.

Today we are on the cusp of yet another transition: in 2023 The Voices and Faces Project will be rebranded and expanded to become Center for Story & Witness, a global hub for narrative storytelling housed at the Simmons Center for Global Chicago.

As part of that expansion, novelist and Yale University creative writing instructor R. Clifton Spargo and I will launch the Center's Teacher Training Institute & Fellows Program, training a new generation of writing workshop instructors in our trauma-informed, creatively ambitious methodology and pedagogy. Award-winning journalist Jimmie Briggs — an alumnae of our Voices and Faces Project writing program — will drive our Center's racial justice programming.

None of this would have been possible without the love and support of people like you: the family, friends and allies who believed in our vision when it was just a vision, or supported The Voices and Faces Project as we grew, evolved and expanded.

I hope you will again support us with a year-end gift to The Voices and Faces Project. Donations are tax deductible and will be applied directly to our Fellowship Program and Stories We Tell Scholarship Fund.