I am a student at Northwest Prep, a small public charter school in Santa Rosa. Over the course of the past few months a few other students and I have been pursuing a mission. We are trying to get the Northbay community to record their stories about the 2017 Firestorm, as we personally understand the benefits of doing so.
You see, over the course of the fires, many of our school’s students lost their homes. To help us cope, the teachers got StoryCorps, a nonprofit organization which interviews people about historical events, to come out and record our own stories of the fire. This gave us a chance to talk through the event, what happened, and how it affected us. It felt awkward at first, but in the end it allowed us to come to grips with the negative experiences. We hope to share this healing with the community.
To do this, we have created a website, Northbayfirestorm.jimdo.com, that explains the benefits of sharing stories through interviews, and teaches people to record such interviews. Our website is a tool that will guide the community through their story sharing process. However, our website is useless if the community doesn’t know it exists. That’s where we need you.
— Benjamin Paul Eisley, Santa Rosa
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