Organization: Inquilinos Boricuas en Acción

Soul, using her background in spoken word and performance, weaves a colorful metaphor of her grandmother's cooking and kitchen for her family's closeness and cultural heritage. It's a remembrance of the power of her grandmother's presence and cooking to gather family and teach life lessons. The perspective of this story is especially interesting, told by in the narration and by the angle of the many cooking action still photos from the level of a child peering over a kitchen worktable's edge.

Mayan is a youth worker at IBA, but he is also many other things. His story is focused on revealing the many roles he plays in his life, which are sometimes contradictory to stereotypes and to each other. He struggled a bit with the writing aspect of the digital storytelling process, although he had experience as a spoken word and hip hop artist. His "script" actually turned out to be a freestyle recording after he pitched several ideas to the story circle group and one-on-one with the facilitators.

Barbara wrote this story about her progression as a mother and community leader in her housing development, Villa Victoria in the South End of Boston. She started the workshop as the host with great hesitation about actually having a story about herself. Her modesty about her standing within the Villa Victoria community was challenged by her fellow IBA co-workers.