DePaul University’s VOICES OF CHARITY ORAL HISTORY PROJECT is now live online.
The Voices of Charity Oral History Project was initiated in honor of the Centennials of Marillac Social Center (in 2014) and the St. Vincent de Paul Center (in 2015) both located in Chicago. In order to document the histories of the two Centers, narrators were selected based on their having worked at one of the Centers for at least ten years or more. In all, twenty-one narrators were interviewed between October 2012 and October 2013. Interviews addressed workers’ experiences dating as far back as the 1960s. Interviews were transcribed verbatim and checked against the audio for omissions/errors; minor edits were made to ensure clarity.
The oral history project was generously funded by the Irene and Bill Beck Faculty Fellowship, sponsored by the Beck Research Initiative for Women, Gender, and Community and the Irwin W. Steans Center for Community-based Service Learning and Community Service Studies. The website design was generously funded by the Vincentian Endowment Fund of DePaul University.
The project could not have been completed without the diligent work of students from HST 396: ORAL HISTORY PROJECT in Autumn 2012, and most notably it could not have been completed without Eleanor Bossu, who served as the Lead Interviewer for the project. All are recognized on the credits section of the website. The faculty lead on this project was Amy Tyson, an associate professor in DePaul University’s History Department.