Karen and Karenni history archive driven by Karen and Karenni youth.

Our project has been rolling out with the four outcomes in mind:Gather stories from Karen and Karenni elders in both Minnesota and our homelandUse these stories to build a youth centered, learning program where participants can connect with and explore their identity, history, heritage, and homeland.Learning through knowledge co-creation, storytelling circles, primary source panels and interviews, youth in this program will be empowered to drive the development of the first ever Karen and Karenni history archive.Preserve the learnings from this program to be archived and organized for all Minnesotans to access.
A detailed and measurable plan was set by our team to make sure all outcomes are accomplished by June 30th. (See below) MILESTONESSeptember 2022 - January 2023 Focus on building the systems and planning for the archive Conduct listening and story circle sessions with youth and young adults in the communityGather initial stories, interviews and history about Karen and Karenni history, culture and heritage December 2022 - January 2023 will be spent in Thailand and Myanmar February 2023 - April 2023 Organize initial interviews and historical evidence into an online archive model Begin developing a pilot cohort of Karen and Karenni youth to engage with stories and interviews gathered This will include knowledge co-construction & story circle processes
April 2023 - June 2023Offer opportunities for pilot cohort participants to research and participate in interviews to grow the development of the archive Gather feedback and make adjustments to launch a full year, cohort model youth program for the 2023/2024 school year This will give us a chance to grow and continue to develop the Karen and Karenni archive We are on track with our measured outcomes to date. If we accomplish the above four outcomes, we expect to see two measurable results by June 30th. The first result of this project will be the digital, online archive that consists of the interviews completed throughout the 9 months of the grant. These interviews are based on the information and knowledge we collected from stakeholders and community members in the Fall of 2022. The second result that we will have completed is detailed feedback and data from our pilot cohort that will help us plan next steps with the digital archive. We are excited to already have
Outcome #1: Focus on systems and planning for the archive As a team, we met with local historians, archive experts & librarians to get feedback and ideas on how to best conduct oral interviews Notable Dates: October 26th - One day of work with Podcast/Blogger Joah McGee to discuss how to formulate questions and develop trust in interviews November 4th - Meeting with Saengmany (Director of East Side Freedom Library) NOTES ATTACHED We hosted 4 listening sessions with our local Karen community; this allowed us to practice the structure of story circles and provided data for what type of information we should gather in our interviews Dates of listening sessions: 9/29, 10/17, 11/15 & 11/29 Example of notes taken from a listening session **Changes based on outcome #1 results: A theme/pattern we continued to notice in our listening sessions was the desire from youth/young adults to capture cultural components of the Karen culture just as much as the history aspect. We decided to try to capture stories and information about history and culture based on this feedback

Outcome #2: Use these stories to create a youth centered learning program This is slated to occur in February - April timeline, however, we have already created a youth cohort session that we believe will be where we pull from initially for the pilot cohort Outcome #3: Develop feedback and adjustments to launch a history, heritage, homeland cohort This will occur near the end of our archive project (May & June) Outcome #4: Archive development To date, we have curated interviews from community members both locally and abroad; please find attached an example interview We are researching various digital archives that currently exist to help determine how we want organize and set up the archive; the planning stages of the digital archive can be found here; Measurable Outcomes: Gather stories from Karen and Karenni elders in both Minnesota and our homelandThis can be tracked on our youtube page (@urbanvillage2279)Use these stories to build a youth centered, learning program where participants can connect with and explore their identity, history, heritage, and homeland.This was tracked on our After School Scholars program; Tuesdays and Thursdays throughout the school year Learning through knowledge co-creation, storytelling circles, primary source panels and interviews, youth in this program will be empowered to drive the development of the first ever Karen and Karenni history archive.Notes were taken at many of our story circle events and used to adapt and revise our interview questions and process as well as content collected from interviewees Preserve the learnings from this program to be archived and organized for all Minnesotans to access. Access to the digital archive can be found at www.theurbanvillage.com
The outcomes of this project were completed and the product of a digital archive has now been created and ready to expand. Our work was achieved in large part to the commitment of youth in our community who attended our After School Scholarsmeetings on Tuesdays and Thursdays and shared consistently what was helpful and what was missing from our primary source interviews. Feedback from the community has been our driving force of measuring our goals and ensuring that our outcomes are achieved. We gained feedback predominantly through the story circle format to ensure all voices were heard and incorporated.
We broke up our four outcomes into measurable timelines throughout the year to ensure we were on track to achieve our goals requested through the Humanities Grant. Below you can see the milestone breakdown. MILESTONESSeptember 2022 - January 2023 Focus on building the systems and planning for the archive Conduct listening and story circle sessions with youth and young adults in the communityGather initial stories, interviews and history about Karen and Karenni history, culture and heritage December 2022 - January 2023 will be spent in Thailand and Myanmar February 2023 - April 2023 Organize initial interviews and historical evidence into an online archive model Begin developing a pilot cohort of Karen and Karenni youth to engage with stories and interviews gathered This will include knowledge co-construction & story circle processes
April 2023 - June 2023Offer opportunities for pilot cohort participants to research and participate in interviews to grow the development of the archive Gather feedback and make adjustments to launch a full year, cohort model youth program for the 2023/2024 school year This will give us a chance to grow and continue to develop the Karen and Karenni archive The two quantifiable results from this grant include the digital, online archive that consists of the interviews completed throughout the 9 months of the grant. These interviews are based on the information and knowledge we collected from stakeholders and community members in the Fall of 2022. The second result is detailed feedback and data from our pilot cohort that will help us plan next steps with the digital archive.

Since the interim report, our need to prioritize funding staff grew larger. As we continued to gather interviews and resources for the archive, we discovered the importance of gaining community feedback and input. Therefore, our Program Director, Tu Lor Eh Paw, increased her hours to include a focused time each week where she shared our interviews with youth participating in our programs. This helped us discover what was working with the archive and what needed to be revised to become more user friendly and welcoming to our youth that we serve. Due to this change, we had to get more strategic on what we purchased for the archive in our other budget areas.