Embedded Files
About Me
About Me
My name is Isabella Freitas, and I am a sophomore this year. I have been doing all-star cheer for about 6 years, and it has become a big part of my life because it has taught me teamwork, discipline, and confidence. I enjoy being involved in activities that allow me to connect with others and learn new things. For my project, Voices without Borders, I wanted to focus on helping people better understand immigrants and the challenges they may face. I hope my project helps bring more awareness to this issue and encourages others to learn more about it.
Community Need
Community Need
My project, Voices without Borders, focuses on the challenges many immigrants face when coming to a new country. Immigrants often experience difficulties such as language barriers, discrimination, lack of resources, and trouble adjusting to a new environment. Many immigrants also live with fear or stress because of discrimination and concerns involving immigration enforcement and ICE, which can make families feel unsafe or misunderstood.
I chose this issue because immigration is something that connects to my own family. Many of my family members came to the United States from Brazil looking to build a better life for themselves and create more opportunities for their future. Seeing their experiences helped me understand how difficult moving to a new country can be and how immigrants are sometimes unfairly judged or misunderstood by others. Through this project, I hope to help end some of those misunderstandings by spreading awareness, encouraging empathy, and helping people learn more about immigrant experiences and the struggles many families face.
Project Goals and Progress
Project Goals and Progress
The goal of my project, Voices without Borders, is to help educate people about immigration and encourage more understanding and empathy toward immigrants and their families. For the educational part of my project, I am creating a children’s book about a little girl moving to the United States and adjusting to a new life. The story focuses on the emotions, challenges, and experiences that comes when moving to a new country. I chose to make it a children’s book because I believe it is important to teach kindness, empathy, and understanding at a young age.
One of my main goals is to read my book to the kindergarten class at the elementary school so younger students can begin learning about immigration in a simple and meaningful way. I hope the story helps children better understand what it may feel like to move to a new place, learn a different language, and adapt to a different culture. Through this project, I want to help reduce stereotypes and misunderstandings about immigrants while creating positive conversations in schools and communities.
Community Partnership
Community Partnership
For my project, Voices without Borders, I have been working with Immigrant Learning Center through Ariana Moir. The Immigrant Learning Center focuses on supporting immigrants through education, resources, and community programs while also helping spread awareness about immigrant experiences and contributions. Their goal is to create a more welcoming and informed community by helping people better understand immigration and different cultures.
Ariana was very supportive of my project and shared ideas for how I could make my children’s book available to more people. She suggested possibly sharing a PDF or link to the book on their website along with a book guide that we could help create together. She also told me about opportunities to participate in storytimes and suggested reaching out to local elementary schools, libraries, and bookstores to do read-alouds of my book.
This partnership has helped me think about different ways to share my project and educate younger children about immigration in a meaningful and engaging way. With the support and guidance from the Immigrant Learning Center and Ariana, I hope my project can help encourage empathy, understanding, and acceptance toward immigrants and their experiences.
How the Community Can Help
How the Community Can Help
The community can help support my project, Voices without Borders, by helping spread awareness about immigration and the experiences of immigrant families. One way people can help is by sharing my children’s book with younger students, teachers, schools, libraries, and community organizations so more children can learn about empathy, kindness, and understanding different cultures. Community members can also support the project by attending read-aloud events, sharing the project on social media, and encouraging conversations about immigration and acceptance.
Another way to help is by supporting organizations that work with immigrants and provide educational resources and services to immigrant families. Learning more about immigration and listening to immigrant stories can help reduce stereotypes and misunderstandings within communities.
Page updated
Report abuse