Our goal is to change the world through storytelling!

We believe individual stories can change the world and we aim to do everything we can to change it for the better.

The Illustrated Memoir Project now and next.

The Illustrated Memoir Project engages refugee and immigrant youth to write and illustrate true stories from their lives. The goal of this project is to foment intellectual self-trust in the participants, center their lived experience in the classroom, and increase multi-modal literacies. Through sharing these stories we strive to foster a richer understanding of the experience of refugee and immigrant youth and build a more welcoming global community.

Since 2019 the illustrated memoir project has engaged newly arrived immigrant and refugee middle and high school students in the Cincinnati region. In 2025 we began working internationally with young refugees. The first international iteration was in the Nakivale Refugee Settlement in Uganda where we were thrilled to partner with Alight.

During the Project, each student writes and illustrates their own unique memoir. These memoirs are then printed and copies are given to the student and the school, library, or community organization we are working with. We are constantly working to find new ways to share the completed memoirs with the public through libraries, story times, school visits, and exhibitions.

Nearly half of the memoirs created so far are bilingual. There are multiple trilingual books. These memoirs provide an opportunity for refugee and immigrant youths to share their unique lived experience and ways of knowing the world. The project celebrates the students’ multilingualism, resiliency, and knowledge and provides myriad opportunities for peer-to-peer mentoring and scaffolded learning opportunities.

We are actively cultivating partnerships to develop diverse avenues for sharing these unique stories with the broader community to foster empathy and understanding of the refugee and immigrant experience.

You can help support and grow this important work through tax deductible donations to Maketank Inc.

Maketank Inc. has robust plans for the Illustrated Memoir Project. In the next year we plan to travel back to Nakivale and to other refugee settlements and with the help of memoir project alumni, bring this opportunity and experience to young people around the world.