We Belong

Advocating for Justice in our Immigrant Communities

Diana Carranza

Senior studying Sociology with GISES concentration

Everett Fellow: Tech Guide

Hello! This project is important to me because having a space and a platform for people to share in their successes and struggles create a unique glimpse of the lives that isn't represented often. Understanding the lived experience of the immigrant community in the county will exemplify if they find belonging in their community or not.

Jordan Noelte

Senior Legal Studies and Sociology with GISES concentration

Everett Fellow: Hearts Section Leader and Project Guide

I wanted to get on board with this project because I know how powerful representation is when trying to find belonging in a community. Hearing and learning the stories of those who have different experiences than ours opens the heart and mind to a more holistic worldview, and also empathy.

About We Belong

We Belong is a student and faculty collaborative research project that works with the local Santa Cruz county immigrant community to uncover spaces of exclusion in order to find ways they can find acceptance for their community and uplift their voices/experiences in order to advocate for reform. This project led by Professor Steve McKay and Dr. Leslie Lopez collaborates with students and faculty alike to collect interview transcripts from the local immigrant and mixed- status individuals ( which are identified as families where certain members of the family hold different citizenship statuses) and uncover different data as to why they feel or don't feel a sense of belonging.

Our Process

Tech used: Adobe Premiere for video editing, Google workspaces for script creation & storyboarding, and Adobe Audition for voice recording.

Milestones:

Selecting interview transcripts

Creating scripts for digital stories storyboarding

Finding stock footage/images for video learning

Navigating Adobe Premiere

Recording audio of script, editing visuals with audio

Our Outputs

1901 video export 3.mp4

Lessons Learned

Heads on Justice

The lack of awareness to Immigrant issues creates an ignorance in the greater community to not educate oneself on the many struggles and barriers that mixed-status families and individuals face everyday. It is critical to provide useful tools as well as representation and advocacy for the community.

Hands on Tech

We learned that tech barriers can be overcome by utilizing self teaching methods like YouTube and 'Help/FAQ' forums to make sure we are on the right track .Practice makes the best learning experience and it paid off with the creation of the videos.

Hearts on Change

We gained new levels of respect for the lives of others- especially since we had the responsibility of highlighting their experiences. We also gained an understanding of ourselves and our capacities with our workloads; managing our time became essential.

"You are not lucky to be here. The world needs your perspective. They are lucky to have you.”

Antonio Tijerino, President & CEO of the Hispanic Heritage Foundation

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