AMY MAIELLO HAGEDORN TRAINING INSTITUTE 

Takes Herstory Into the Next Quarter Century

The notion of passing along the dare to care-- at the heart of Herstory’s mission and work--  is deceptively simple.  The pedagogy and way of life that has grown up around it, touching thousands, is multi-faceted and profound.   

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Our training program began informally, in 2004, when a handful of workshop members began to work with our founder to articulate tools that would exchange a collective study of what creates empathy in a reading stranger for more conventional approaches to narrative practice.   Little did any of us know, when the facilitators began to work in the jails and with women writing in Spanish, that almost 20 years later we would have a formalized training institute, in partnership with the Humanities Institute at Stony Brook University and the national Coalition for Community Writing, creating an ever expanding network of workshops in the schools, in the jails, and in the community,  reaching out locally, nationally, and even beginning to reach out nationally.

We are honored to name our training institute after Amy Maiello Hagedorn, who was present as a writer when the seeds for the training program were sown, in celebration of all she contributed to the movement for justice and equity on Long Island and to Herstory’s vision and growth.  Our world wouldn’t be the same without her,  and all that she has given to us all.  
 

They began to apply their discoveries to working with women in the county jails and Spanish speakers who wanted to write in the language of their memories and dreams,  and soon magazine, and then books were born.