By Andrew McDonald | Operations Manager
2020 is set to be the biggest year yet for the Muslim American Journeys project. MALA's team is hard at work in Chicago, New York, and Washington D.C. collecting the stories of American Muslims, and archiving oral histories. These stories illuminate the diversity within American Muslim communities, and showcase the range of contributions that Muslims continue to make to society every day. Take, for example, one of our newest storytellers, Amir Badr, the CEO of Upkey:
"I came to Chicago in May, so when it was still winter. I remember I wanted to cry on the inside because I couldn’t communicate with people. And it felt so bad not being able to ask questions due to being so shy. Part of the shyness was cultural, but part of it was also because I was just new. It was an incredible feeling though to be like oh my god I made it! But then also realizing that oh my god I made it but I don’t know what to do now! I remember looking around at people and thinking that everything was so beautiful, everyone was kind of free and everyone was doing their own thing. Even though I was very scared and nervous, it felt like I was in pain. Deep deep down, I had this new hope that I am in the right place and that even though I’m about to cry now I am going to figure this out.
This was definitely a personal and passion kind of driven idea for me, everyone else that is at the Upkey family, you know we have grown the team to twenty-plus people now and we are just getting started. So, I don’t see this being a mere venture because I think there is an underdog in all of us. We all want to see a hard worker whether they are a student or professional, get the chance they deserve."
MALA has collected and archived hundreds of unique success stories like Amir's. We are currently working to expand the Muslim American Journeys project even further by developing more multimedia approaches to storytelling. With your support MALA can continue to collect and share these incredible stories. Our journey has just begun.
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