Color of My Voice is an animated series where individuals who faced racial discrimination get a second chance to rewrite their story. Our team of mostly students of color spotlight underrepresented voices, cultivate compassion, illustrating how beautifully similar and different people are.

Our Deliverables

With your support, we will create four 7-10 minute episodes to showcase underrepresented voices finding confidence in who they are. Using hand choreography and evidence-based methods, we will create spaces to learn and heal. We will post our work on YouTube. We hope to submit longer films to film festivals, while employing our soft power alongside international collaborations with organizations to ensure that race is no longer a predictor of a person’s success.

The Shape of My Eyes

After a kindergartener gets mocked for having eyes that looked so “Chinese,” he and his mom come up with a plan together to share with his class a different meaning of being “Chinese.”

We Were Just Kids

A Nigerian-British student wrestles with deciding which moments in her life are worth respecting authority at the expense of respecting herself – whether these moments are explicit or not.

Shining on an Autumn Day

National fears once shaped a student’s insecurities after one pivotal September day. One September day many years later, she has to decide if it is worth it to wear a traditional dress – a salwar kameez – to school, at the potential cost of her friendships.

There are more stories currently under development as well. Each story in the video series will last 7-10 minutes each.

 

 

 

Why tell stories? Storytelling is one of the most powerful sources of societal change: through stories, we live millions of lives in one. Internet series like ours can increase opportunities and accessibility to understand how to interact with people of diverse backgrounds. Stories pass along generations of wisdom, teaching us how to interact with others – they have tremendous capacity to both change culture and advance justice. As author L.R. Knost promotes, we should not just try to toughen up the next generation, but instead inspire them to create a kinder world.

I grew up alongside a wide variety of people, in one of the few American cities with urban-suburban interdistrict transfer programs, as well as the American city with the highest Deaf population per capita (Rochester, NY). I then lived abroad in both East Asia and Western Europe, then transferred from my local community college to Johns Hopkins University. Thousands of miles later, I came to realize that many people had beautiful, resilient, powerful stories that were systematically overlooked. Everyone has value, but many have a beauty that mainstream culture does not know how to appreciate nor access.

Telling underrepresented stories does not just benefit the storytellers. It benefits everyone. One of our CMV storytellers, Aaliyah, captured it best: "Diversity doesn't just benefit those who 'need' to be included. A degree of dehumanization happens when people are not exposed to others that are not like them." When one person heals, we can all heal together.

In order to ensure that we make an impact, we employ evidence-based techniques supported by scientific research. For example, we use colorful hands for hand choreography, because according to an experiment, “the Purple Hand Study,” while racial bias weakened people’s ability to feel the pain of a Black and white hand being pricked by a needle, all people felt the highest level of empathy for a purple hand also being pricked. But why do we rarely show faces, and why animation? Here’s more about the science behind CMV. 

 

 

We dream of: 

(1) Making CMV internationally recognized for partnering with entities enacting societal solutions, policy changes, community building, all in ensuring that race is no longer a predictor of a person’s success.

(2) Creating impactful DEI trainings.

(3) Creating feature films that illustrate people breaking stereotypes and rewriting their stories.

 

 

We started as a college club, but have now expanded across five universities. Given how divided we are today, now is the right time to expand our reach with more professional videos in order to cultivate compassion, understanding, and healing. We invite you to join us in making CMV possible.

We are currently crowdfunding for about 5% of what we would need for CMV to continue running as a video series for one year starting in summer 2023. Here is our Seed&Spark budget breakdown:

Equipment: $1,000
Contingency: $500
HR: $500
Director and Producer: $1,500
Pre-Production Costs (Wordsmiths): $1,500
Animation: $2,500
Score and Composing: $1,250
Sound production: $1,250

Total: $10,000

Spread the Word!

You can also support and share our work. Feel free to copy and paste the following, then post on social media:

Inspired by “Color of My Voice” spotlighting underrepresented voices finding confidence in themselves despite racial discrimination, while creating compassion and healing. 

youtu.be/nmrI8dzedoU
@ColorOfMyVoice @seedandspark #myCMVstory
bit.ly/fundCMV

Just watched “Color of My Voice” feature people getting a second chance to rewrite their story despite facing racial discrimination. Beautiful hand choreography and animations.

youtu.be/nmrI8dzedoU
@ColorOfMyVoice @seedandspark #myCMVstory
bit.ly/fundCMV

We wouldn’t be able to do this without you. It means a lot to us already that you are taking steps to understand our work.