Project summary: Voice of Witness oral history book series, brings firsthand human rights stories to broad audiences through books, classrooms, and community engagement.

Narrative challenge: Ensuring that deeply personal stories of injustice translate into sustained educational and social impact beyond publication.

Evaluation metrics: Audience reach and diversity, educational adoption, partnerships, and integration into curricula and advocacy work.

Websites: VoiceOfWitness.org | PantaRhea.org

Voice of Witness is a leading oral history and human rights storytelling project that uses first-person narrative, education programs, and community partnerships to help readers, teachers, and students engage deeply with issues of injustice, displacement, and survival. This case study reflects how storytelling can support human rights education, expand public understanding, and create lasting social impact.

At just nine years old, Hla Min was taken by soldiers in Burma. What began as a holiday evening ended in forced recruitment—one moment among many that reveal the human cost of political violence.

His story appears in Nowhere to Be Home: Narratives from Survivors of Burma’s Military Regime, part of the Voice of Witness series. These books center firsthand accounts from people directly impacted by human rights crises—from undocumented workers in the United States to displaced communities around the world.

As editor Maggie Lemere recalls, Hla Min spoke through the night during their interview in Bangladesh, knowing it was his only chance to share his story. That urgency lives throughout the series—stories told not as statistics, but as full human lives.

Voice of Witness creates what its leaders describe as a “deeply immersive” narrative experience—one that allows readers to encounter individuals not as victims, but as complex people with histories, families, and futures.

“We’re determined to represent the whole person and their whole life. Otherwise the narrator can feel reduced—that the only thing that matters is what happened to them.”
—Dave Eggers, co-founder, Voice of Witness

Story as Education and Action

The impact of Voice of Witness extends beyond publishing. Its education programs bring oral history into classrooms and communities through teacher trainings, youth programs, and curriculum tools like The Power of Story. These efforts help students understand that history is not only written from the top down—it is lived and told by individuals.

Through partnerships with organizations such as, Facing History and Ourselves, Aim High, Human Rights Watch, and the
Korematsu Institute, the work reaches educators, advocates, and young people across the country.

For many students, participating in oral history shifts their understanding of power and voice—revealing that history can be created from lived experience, not just institutions.

Philanthropy and Narrative Impact

The Panta Rhea Foundation supported this work because of its belief in the power of the arts to expand imagination and possibility. Funding contributed to the development of The Power of Story guide and a collaboration with the Magnum Foundation that combined photography and narrative to deepen engagement.

Beyond measurable outcomes, this work points to something harder to quantify: how storytelling can shift perception, deepen empathy, and open new ways of seeing the world.

As Panta Rhea’s leadership has reflected, storytelling helps create “a space between the way things are and the way they could be.”

That space—where imagination meets lived experience—is where narrative becomes a force for change.

Watch The Words of Kyaw Zwar, a short film created by Voice of Witness and Magnum Foundation.