Facing Project at UCLA, The

The Facing Project at UCLA, an affiliate of The Facing Project, started as a student-run collaboration between the national umbrella Facing Project nonprofit organization and ASUCLA's own undergraduate, student-run Community Service Commission (CSC). The Facing Project (FP) connects people through stories to strengthen communities. While the project started as part of CSC Staff, it became an registered campus organization in 2016, two years after its start at UCLA. The FP model at UCLA enlists a team of writers to be paired one-on-one with students who have come forward to share their story (either anonymously or not) to better educate the community around them (these individuals are known as our storytellers). After their pairing, staff writers and storytellers meet together on a regular basis, getting to know each other and building a relationship of trust. This relationship allows staff writers to ultimately write their storyteller's story from a first-person voice as if they were the storyteller. Through these student-told stories, the project aims to convey and explore what students have done and overcome to get to where they are today. The stories revolve around a theme which changes annually. At the end of each year, the project will culminate into a published book which is then distributed to the UCLA community. Facing Project, both the larger organization and its UCLA branch, hopes that that sharing these stories will help spread awareness about various issues to unify communities and promote discussion to help inspire social change.

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Signatories: Nicole Penrod, Neil DSilva, and Xiaoyang Su

Advisor: Pamela R Cysner