a listening project
About TREE LIFE STORY
TREE LIFE STORY is a Listening Project.
Its goal is to pay tribute to the voices, stories, wisdom, and concerns of coastal persons of color living in the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor along the coast from North Carolina to Florida.
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It is run as a collaboration between the Susie King Taylor Women's Institute & Ecology Center in Midway, GA, and the University of Georgia. Read more about the creators and hosts below...
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This is a non-profit project. The purpose is to elevate the voices and stories of coastal residents, not to use or appropriate their stories in any other way.
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Following in the footsteps of StoryCorps
We took inspiration from the national non-profit StoryCorps Project, which has collected and recorded over half a million stories from every walk of life in America and beyond. Storytellers can share interviews on their website, and all stories are archived in the American Folkways Collection in the U.S. Library of Congress.
By creating our own TREE LIFE STORY community within StoryCorps Project, we can record and share stories on this website and the StoryCorps website, and archive them directly in the Library of Congress.
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Project Hosts
The project is hosted by Lizzie King and Hermina Glass-Hill, with lots of input and inspiration from friends and colleagues on the Georgia Coast and beyond.
Lizzie is a professor at the University of Georgia, specializing in ecological restoration and bio-cultural conservation. She worked alongside livestock herding communities in East Africa for 25 years. She is now learning about the complex history and future of coastal ecosystems, and is working to conserve their biological and cultural integrity.
Hermina is an oral historian, the Director of the Susie King Taylor Women's Institute & Ecology Center, and a social and environmental activist. Her award-winning organization campaigns for the health of the coast's sacred waters, nature education for girls, environmental justice, and rightful recognition of African American and Gullah Geechee history and heritage.
History
The TREE LIFE STORY project was launched in 2020, with funding from a Coastal Incentive Grant from the Georgia Department of Natural Resources to develop outreach materials. But the coronavirus pandemic hit just two weeks before our first scheduled community listening events. In 2022, we received a new source of support for the project through NOAA and Georgia Sea Grant.
The project is now actively seeking opportunities to attend community events and record interviews with coastal residents in the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor. Contact us to schedule an interview, or if you'd like us to bring our outreach exhibit and recording booth to your event!
Sponsors
