Solidarity Across Borders

In our final event of the Preporatory Workshop Series for the Solidarity Essay Competition, we are pleased to welcome Migrants of the Mediterranean to our stage at the Goethe-Institut New York. This workshop's aim is to help illuminate one potential topic that students could consider researching more about and addressing in their essays. 

About Migrants of the Mediterranean:
Migrants of the Mediterranean (MotM) is a global Humanitarian Storytelling NGO documenting the individual Journey Stories of the world’s most impoverished and vulnerable people, first in Lampedusa, Italy, and now across Europe and in the US. The organization’s Humanitarian Storytelling methodology is a hybrid of humanitarianism, journalism and contemporary history, creating a platform to dignify and give voice to people who are otherwise unheard in the migrant community. We show up for them, in order to bring you a document of the truth. To hold for history. To advocate for change now. Visit www.migrantsofthemed.org to learn more, and follow MotM on Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn to support and see the latest updates from the field.

Event description:
What does it mean to stand beside someone? Solidarity can be expressed in many forms, and at Migrants of the Mediterranean (MotM) it is done by creating long-term relationships with vulnerable people in the migrant community who have been excluded from a discourse about their own experiences.

From arrival at a border zone or national port of entry, through the asylum claim process, and through life in the months and years ahead, the NGO’s one-on-one encounters develop into trusting relationships from which nuanced records of a person’s life may emerge.

These are extraordinary testimonies, photographs and conversations that are only possible through purposeful acts of solidarity. People in the MotM migrant community are given the opportunity to speak freely, as they choose and in their own words, to describe the traumas, difficulties, and also joys of the lives they lead.

It is a space to describe the insecurity and frequent violence of transit in irregular migration; the alienation and feelings of being unwanted in a new country; and the general hardships of being true to oneself amidst entrenched cultural stereotypes that define them as invaders. Migrants of the Mediterranean creates a space that in almost any other context is missing for people in the migrant community, but that is vital for their integrity as people.

Migrants of the Mediterranean demonstrates solidarity by standing at a migrant’s side to restore that opportunity to be heard and understood; while the outcome of that encounter is not just a document for the historical record that may shift us toward a more humane migration policy, but a shared gift of deep connectedness and love.

Join MotM Founder, Pamela Kerpius, who will speak about the history, mission and work of the organization, including stories from her reporting in southern Germany, and hear from select members of the MotM migrant community who will join remotely from their home cities in The Netherlands and Italy in conversation with the founder.

Attendees will have the chance to ask questions about the work, uncover insights to inspire their own writing, and to interact with MotM migrant community members directly.