The Path Forward for the Illustrated Memoir Project

As we look to the future it became apparent that we needed to change the format and timeline of the project. For the first five years the Illustrated Memoir Project had taken place over a 9-month academic year, meeting once per week. During the 2024-2025 summer and school year we implemented several pilot projects to test a more compressed and condensed version of the project. We ran the project as a summer experience that met multiple times per week as an enrichment activity with youth in the Cincinnati region. We integrated the project into the curriculum of ELL classrooms in multiple schools, meeting daily for an entire quarter of the school year, working with twice as many students each session as we had in the past. And finally, we traveled to Uganda to run the project in the Nakivale Refugee Settlement with one of our former students and current board member, Enock Sadiki. The Nakivale project met for two hours each day, five days per week throughout the 3 week summer break in the school calendar in May. All three of these new formats were a great success and will be the path forward. In the coming years we plan to expand the reach of the project in the US and abroad, with a strong focus on bringing the project to as many young people as possible currently living in refugee settlements throughout the continent of Africa. These new iterations allow the project to be more nimble and reach a much greater number of young people in diverse locations around the US and the world.

Summer at Tikkun Farm

Thanks to the generous support of the Ohio Arts Council and the Starbucks Foundation, Maketank will run a pilot program in partnership with Tikkun Farm during the summer of 2024. We will engage the job trainees at the Farm to create illustrated memoirs during their creative expressions time at the farm throughout the summer. This pilot project will allow us to test run some of the aspects of the project we will encounter when we go to Uganda, primarily the fact that our participants will not have the use of chromebooks for the writing and sharing of their memoirs. The Tikkun pilot will also be the first time we are running the project with the help of an intern who is a former project participant.

To learn more about Tikkun Farm click here.

To learn more about Ohio Arts Council and the many projects they support please visit oac.ohio.gov

Nakivale Refugee Settlement, Isingiro District, Uganda

We were thrilled to partner with Alight to bring the Illustrated Memoir Project to Uganda in May of 2025. We worked with 44 young people in the refugee settlement while we were there, meeting each day in the Nakivale Library. Project director, Kate Carlier Currie and board member, intern, and past participant, Enock Sadiki traveled back to where Enock grew up to engage young refugees in Nakivale to share their stories in writing and original illustrations. Those memoirs will be available here on our site by the end of the summer, 2025.

Check out some of the brief interviews with a few of the amazing young people we worked with in Nakivale in May.