Civic, religious and nonprofit leaders gathered last year at the Jewish Community Center to address the depth of problems the new Trump administration posed. Prime among the issues raised: The disconnect and divergent views people hold regarding who belongs and who shouldn’t belong in communities and who we are as a nation.
That meant people would have to figure out “where they fit into this,” especially immigrants and refugees, said Sally Rafson, founder of Sharing Our Story, an organization that has worked for more than 10 years with people to create their own digital stories.
Drawing on her background in anthropology and teaching, she needed to figure out where the disconnect started. and she believed it started early in people’s lives. So she started researching how important identity is to refugee, immigrant and minority youth and the development of that identity. What she found confirmed that the teen years are critical in developing not only expressing identity but also feeling a sense of belonging.
It led to a collaboration with nonprofit organizations that recruited 11 diverse teens – refugee, immigrant, African American and Jewish – for a “Exploring Identity: Teen Voices” project. They worked four Saturdays in September at JFSC’s Upstreet Teen Center in Squirrel Hill and created video stories that address how they define themselves.
Now they will share them with the public this Sunday from 2 to 4 p.m. at the Jewish Community Center of Greater Pittsburgh. The teens’ short videos plus a project overview video will be presented at the free event, with Center of Life CEO and Founder Tim Smith facilitating. The event will include multicultural entertainment plus a global food tasting.
Partners in the project – Jewish Family and Community Services of Pittsburgh, Casa San Jose, Center of Life, Bhutanese Community Association and Temple Sinai recruited the students. They worked with volunteer mentors, many of whom teach writing, and Oleksandr Frazé-Frazénko, the tech assistant on the project, created a culmination video. The Ukrainian filmmaker, writer, and musician is in residence at City of Asylum, which hosted Rafson’s similar storytelling project on Ukraine last year.
A second presentation will take place on Jan. 31, 2026, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Mt. Lebanon.
In promoting the events, Rafson noted that the project “follows on the heels of the recent Eradicating Hate and Welcoming Pittsburgh events that highlighted storytelling as a means for public education and building greater empathy to community members.”
Its goal: “address the broader issues of racism, anti-Semitism, and xenophobia that are rampant in our society.”
The teens bonded, she said, as they worked together. They learned how to write their stories, select the story to tell and master the technology.
She said her research showed that it is important when bringing together diverse teens for them to get to know each other and learn more about each other’s lives.
The teens reflected on that in the summary video Frazé-Frazénko compiled.
“What I enjoyed most about the program was getting to know more people and to be able to connect with people, especially people from different cultures and of different races that I never really thought that I would be able to connect with,” Emma Ibarra Roman said in it.
Telling their stories ranged from digging deep into their experiences to connecting and making new friends to starting careers.
Jose Garcia said, “I got a better sense about myself, right. Because I don’t … I don’t look too deep inside myself to ask myself all these questions, and then you put these into a story. Usually you don’t have to do that. But since I went outside of my comfort zone by coming here and talking to people and sharing my story, I feel like I learned more about myself and others.”
Nengali Saadat liked being able to share his story with others. The benefit: “They can hear about you. They can hear your voice.”
Schjuan Wise has been cultivating his own graphic screen printing business for some time, something that his Propel School lauded in an Instagram post last year when he displayed his clothing at the Peoples Gas Holiday Market, Downtown. In addition to telling his personal story, he now has a video depicting his journey “from working at Wendy’s to being able to pursue art full time.”
The mentors explained in the video how they saw the participants grow in the project despite the current environment roiling much of the country.
Hannah Lewis said the students’ work can spark needed public discussion. “We live in a time where I think empathy is in really short supply, and there’s just a lot of fear around people who aren’t from the U.S.,” she said.
Another mentor, Kasey Kennedy, said, “For young people growing up today, the world today is confusing and frightening and complicated. And giving them an opportunity to talk about their identity allows them to find out what is the strength at their core and what is the thing that is going to be, sort of guide them through their passage through life. Because if you only go with what comes from the outside, you can sometimes lose what’s on the inside.”
Mimi Botkin agreed. “This project leads kids to find out things on their own that they may not have known before, and they are producing amazing videos,” the volunteer mentor said.
Oleksandr Frazé-Frazénko said in the video that the work can make a difference. “It’s hard to open up. It’s hard to be vulnerable. It’s hard to share your story. But if you do, you can find people like you. And you can build community, and you can feel you are not alone.”
Rabbi Hindy Finman of the JCC Center for Loving Kindness will introduce the project, and Allegheny County Executive Sara Innamorato will offer some remarks as the program begins.
Anupa Rai and Priyansi Presai will dance to “Damphu Ma Selo,” a Nepali song. Schjuan Wise will perform his “Top of the Morning” song.
Smith will facilitate the discussion after participants see two sets of the videos that are separated by an intermission.
“There is a thing that happens between people of different ethnic upbringings that is mostly due to our conditioning,” Smith wrote in an email. “We can fight side by side in wars, march in protest together, go through college together, but when it comes to sharing power and privilege, we tend to separate. When it comes down to hard choices in our lives, we tend to choose our ethnic group.
“I’m participating in this story telling project because I believe young people have something to say about this.”
The community forum aspect of the project is important to Rafson.
She had as a goal to not only have these two large forums but also throughout 2026 many smaller community forums to reach more people and prompt more discussion. Rafson wanted to give her collaborators funding to do that.
But she hasn’t given up on that goal. The two events will include more fundraising, and anyone can donate, too, to help achieve that. The videos will be posted on her organization’s site and the collaborators’ websites.
Registration is available to Sunday’s event at this link.
Donations for the project are available through New Sun Rising, Share Our Story’s fiscal sponsor at this link.
Helen is a copy editor at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, but she's currently on strike. Contact her at hfallon@unionprogress.com.