The 6th Annual Holiday Fundraiser:
A Note from the Founder

19 December 2024

Dear friends and followers,

It may be a tradition to write you each year during the annual holiday fundraiser, but it is also a treat: it means there are even more ways to tell you how your support this year has made an impact at MotM.

In 2024 we made strong strides in our organization, laid the foundation for important projects and partnerships coming in 2025, and—always the highlight and main event—encountered many new people in the migrant community in Europe and in the U.S. whose stories will move you.

And you read that right. This year, MotM expanded its reach to the Mexico-U.S. border zone, where we've recorded our first stories from the field, and where we are poised to document more as we scale and maintain the expansion in the months and years ahead.

The launch is timely given the incoming Trump administration promising mass deportations, and defining itself with fear mongering of vulnerable migrants and refugees.

You're invited today to read our first story from Nogales, Mexico, of a 49-year-old woman, "Cokky", who arrived at the U.S. port of entry peacefully and in accordance with Customs and Border Protection procedure, and was placed in prison in Florence, AZ, for over a month before being deported. She was stripped of her identity and suffered humiliating circumstances.

Her photo is omitted and her name changed to maintain her security, since she is escaping violence in her home state of Guerrero in southern Mexico; but if you could see her face-to-face as I did last spring, you'd see the kind of person she is, radiant, friendly and warm.

She could be your auntie, your mother or your neighbor. But without a precedent to greet her as a person in need, and instead only at a brutal systems level, she was mistreated and scarred in a way that will stay with her for the rest of her life.

Read her story and ask yourself if this form of dehumanization is the legacy by which you want your generation to be defined.

MotM visited Boston, Mass., in December 2024 to connect with a man, Felix, originally from Cameroon, West Africa, who settled there. His journey to get there wasn't straight forward. He first traveled to South America, then through Central America and Mexico in effort of claiming his asylum in the U.S., where he, like Cokky after arriving, faced savage treatment in southern Arizona "detention" while in an extremely vulnerable state.

His story is forthcoming and will shock you.

Know that as we move closer to the Trump presidency, which is promising further violence and discrimination for people like Felix and Cokky, MotM is dedicated to accounting for as many people as possible—a show of love and dignity for the stories we record and relationships we build.

Indeed, it is always about people first—also behind the scenes. In 2024 we established a group of stellar individuals—true experts and leaders in their fields—that have given us their support as members of our inaugural Board of Directors. With their guidance and support we will be able to act more effectively in bringing our mission to scale.

For those of you who have been with us from the start (I'm talking eight whole years ago when this venture began with me scouting around Lampedusa island in Sicily) you know what it means to see that Board come together.

To imagine the seed of that first trip growing into an org that's a recognized player in the migrant and human rights world is a dream come true. And although I am proud MotM has found this niche—not through data, but the textured, qualitative experiences of people in the migrant community in its Humanitarian Storytelling; and even having the Journey Story of Abraham (Nigeria) cited in the UNCHR, IOM and Mixed Migration Center combined report in July 2024—our work doesn't end there.

Our goal is to make these stories available to more people around the world—to correct the migration narrative. That's why the launch of the Journey Story Archive in French in 2024 was such an achievement.

Thanks to our collaboration with Brown University department of French and Francophone Studies, and University of Massachusetts, Boston department of Modern Languages, Literatures and Cultures, our collection of migration testimonies are now available to the French-speaking public, scholars and policymakers to help do just that.

Accessibility to the archive is also a way to help drive scholarship in migration and linguistic studies, and other areas of research.

While our aim is to begin developing curriculum based on the Journey Story Archive in the future, we were able to reach students across the U.S. in 2024 with lectures at Western Washington University, University of Washington, University of Puget Sound, and at UMass-Boston and UMass-Amherst.

At each turn we saw students and scholars light up with new understanding about the migration phenomenon. It was highlighted even more with the presence of select friends from the MotM migrant community, like Andrew (Nigeria), Promise (Nigeria) and Pazi (Gambia). Their voices will be the ones in minds of students when they imagine "migration" going forward.

That is making migration understood on human terms. And with this much impact in front of us now, just imagine how much more we can do with your support.

Join us for the 6th Annual Holiday Fundraiser today by making your tax-deductible donation—any amount helps keep us going.

We really are counting on you!

You can also forward this to a friend who would like to become a part of the Humanitarian Storytelling community if you are unable to donate this season. Help spread the word. Help us bring humanity to the migration phenomenon.

Thank you and have a happy holiday season.

With gratitude,

Pamela Kerpius
Founder and CEO