Recent studies have highlighted gaps in society’s understanding of the marginalization and oppression faced by minority groups throughout Slovak history. Dominant nationalist narratives have effectively obscured these stories, making it crucial to preserve and amplify them before they are lost forever with the passing of generations. These stories often challenge prevailing notions of equality, justice, and democracy in Slovakia’s narrative. By showcasing these accounts, we can encourage society to reflect on enduring biases and foster a renewed appreciation for the hardships that minorities endured in their fight for fundamental human rights. Furthermore, sharing these hidden stories can facilitate dialogue that sheds light on current injustices. Through this dialogue, younger generations can gain context and take action in solidarity with marginalized communities. Research indicates that with dialogue, support for policies among youth increases over time. While there are already community oral history projects celebrating various identities of Slovak minorities,  it is essential to establish initiatives explicitly connecting these narratives to contemporary policy issues. This approach will help advance progress in Slovakia by preserving historical accounts and fostering authentic intergenerational connections through story sharing.

Our project proposals aim to shed light on the stories of at least 15 individuals who have made an impact in marginalized communities in Slovakia. Over the next two years, we will conduct oral history research to uncover these hidden narratives. Our approach involves recruiting and training a group of 5 facilitators between 18 and 35. These facilitators will be equipped with narrative research techniques, interview skills, and ethical media reporting practices.

Each facilitator will be paired with 2 to 3 narrators from minority communities, including Roma, LGBTIQR+, Jewish, migrant, or refugee groups. Together, they will collect video interviews focusing on the experiences and often overlooked stories of struggle, resilience, and solidarity across different backgrounds.

This collaborative research model fosters understanding; marginalized elders feel empowered by sharing their stories while youth facilitators gain an appreciation for historical social justice issues. Additionally, we plan to organize community dialogue events in five Slovak cities (Šamorín, Trnava, Banská Štiavnica, Bardejov, Martin). During these events, our narrators will engage with civil society groups, educators, and policy stakeholders to discuss the connections between forgotten battles for rights in history and ongoing discrimination faced by minority communities today. 

Our key activity within the broader oral history project will be organizing memoir-writing workshops for elderly narrators from marginalized communities or those with various disadvantages (rural areas, social class, etc.). We would like to target them directly and encounter their overlooked stories. For 6 months, elders participating in our program will attend workshops that project social scientists and guest creative writing mentors facilitate. These workshops, which will last 2 hours each, will guide the participants in developing their memoirs. The topics covered in these workshops include techniques to enhance recall, ethical ways to frame stories, use of language, and reflective exploration of meaning.  These memoirs shed light on connections with heroes who have led minority artistic movements, fought for human rights, conducted groundbreaking journalistic stories, participated in the underground resistance, or just stood his-her voice to protect their dignity. All stories are strong and should have the chance to be listened to again. By documenting these stories from a first-person perspective, we aim to present portraits that often get excluded from narratives. Through the workshop process, we offer elders an opportunity to preserve endangered tales of progress while also seeing them creatively adapted to engage generations. Excerpts from participants’ memoirs will also be incorporated into culminating exhibitions held as part of this project. Overall, this workshop aims to facilitate story-sharing so that obscure histories can endure for the collective benefit of society and to: 

1. Preserves at-risk stories 
2. Counter ageist assumptions
3. Support psychological empowerment 
4. Promote intergenerational solidarity 

This workshop series allows us to work with various content and preserve their memoir with different non-formal educational tools and engagement channels. For this purpose, we plan to have transcripts and audio recordings from all these workshops with individuals whose stories must be highlighted. This collection allows us to promote the project’s aim even more comprehensively, with the potential to target the young generation and society as a whole. 

To do so, we are planning to: 

• Create a series of podcasts profiling how these changemakers were initially treated as fringe outsider who had their pioneering ideas and works later celebrated and memorialized. The podcast focuses on historical narratives under which these changemakers lived and links them to Slovakia’s current political and societal events. We choose firstly, podcast as an easy distributing tool that has the potential to target general society, as it is used as an entertainment tool quickly to be herde by d during various daily activities, 
• Organize a poetry slam event for young people to creatively perform original pieces on the long-term impact of minority change efforts, and to empower those stories, give them a lasting flavor, and re-connect these changemakers with the young generation through their language, buzzwords and remember those narratives that need to be protected and promoted for an open society, 
• Organize live Theatre Reenactments to dramatize critical scenes from the lives of changemakers and blend them with modern forms to connect them to current forms of activism. This is not a new form that we have already used with the support of a young community of artists; in the past, we, with their help, promoted and opened the discussion with storytelling about the rights and lives of refugees.