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Global Resilience COVID19 Stories Project

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In the spring of 2020, Zoe Robbin and Mariam Hassoun felt the overwhelming sense that COVID-19 was all people could think about. Fueled up by the Black Lives Matter protests, they were determined to create a space for activists to reflect on the intersections between the violence caused by COVID and police brutality’s violence towards Black lives.

All around the globe, people impacted by the pandemic are facing disruptions to life that are affecting not only their mental and physical health, but also their families and home environments.

The Global Resilience Stories Project aims to use stories and reflections to:

  • provide a space for an individual to share their story and to heal
  • show the connections between people globally

The hope is to inspire in a difficult time and give a platform for human resilience.

“COVID-19 brought about a global crisis – we found that all around the world, people were facing disruptions to life that were impacting their mental and physical health, families, etcetera. We aimed to use stories and reflections to 1) provide a space for an individual to share their story and in doing so heal and 2) show the connections between people globally. We hoped to inspire in a difficult time and give a platform for human resilience.” – Mariam Hassoun

Mariam and Zoe reached out to their professional and personal networks, created Facebook and Instagram pages for the project, and gradually shared the stories that were submitted to them.  To incentivize submissions, Interfaith Youth Core provided the project with a grant of $200. Mariam and Zoe were thus able to donate $3 per submission to the writer’s choice of Lebanese Red Cross, The Southern Center for Human Rights, or the NAACP. All the inspirational stories are already available on the project’s social media pages.

Global Resilience COVID19 Stories Project on Facebook
Global Resilience COVID19 Stories Project on Facebook

While the project is officially completed, anyone wishing to share their story of resilience can do so here.