The Refugee Archive is working with displaced mothers in Goma, Democratic Republic of the Congo, to record 21 long-form oral histories about displacement, family, survival, work, loss, responsibility, and rebuilding.

These are not five-minute interviews or short testimonials.

Each woman is invited to tell her history in her own words through approximately four to six hours of conversation across several sessions.

The interviews are then translated, transcribed, securely preserved, and prepared for future use in research, education, public history, advocacy, and our work on displacement and female-headed households.

Every gift moves one of these histories closer to completion.

Give $25. Give $50. Give what you can. Help preserve a record that should not be los

What Your Gift Makes Possible

There are real costs behind every oral history.

Women may need transportation, mobile data, child care, meals, and a safe place to participate. Once an interview is complete, there are costs for interpretation, transcription, translation, secure storage, archival preparation, and preservation.

Your gift helps make that work possible.

$25
Helps cover mobile data or transportation for an interview day

$50
Helps cover child care during interviewing

$100
Helps support interpretation and interview-day costs

$250
Helps support documentation, data security, storage, and interview preparation

$600
Helps support preservation, production, archival work, and participant costs

$1,200
Helps fund one complete oral history from interview through preservation

You do not have to fund an entire history to make one possible. Every gift helps move the work forward.

Why These Histories Matter

Displacement is often recorded in numbers: how many people fled, how many need assistance, how many returned, and how many remain displaced.

Those numbers tell us the scale of a crisis.

They cannot tell us what a mother experienced when her family was displaced, what helped her survive, which systems failed her, what she fears about returning, what prevents her from rebuilding a livelihood, or what she believes her community needs next.

That knowledge matters.

Eastern DRC has experienced years of conflict, insecurity, and repeated displacement. Questions about humanitarian assistance, recovery, return, education, livelihoods, and the future of communities are being asked while families are still living through the consequences.

Women raising and supporting families through these conditions hold knowledge that should be part of that record.

A long-form oral history gives a woman the time to explain her experience in her own words rather than reducing it to a statistic, survey response, or brief testimony.

One oral history preserves one person's experience.

Twenty-one histories can reveal something larger: shared barriers, priorities, fears, solutions, and experiences with assistance, work, education, security, family, and return.

That record can be used by researchers, educators, humanitarian organizations, policymakers, community leaders, journalists, students, and future generations seeking to understand this period.

From Conversation to Archive

Recording the interview is only the beginning.

Afterward, each history must be transcribed, translated, reviewed, securely stored, documented, and prepared for long-term preservation.

With the participant's consent and appropriate protections, these histories can contribute to research, education, public programs, art, advocacy, and our work examining the experiences of female-headed households affected by displacement.

We are not collecting stories for a social media campaign that disappears when the headlines change.

We are building a historical record meant to last.

Help Us Complete All 21

Twenty-one women are being invited to document their histories.

Help one more woman sit down and tell hers.

Help us record it.
Help us translate it.
Help us preserve it.

21 women.
21 oral histories.
$25,000.

Make a gift today.

Learn more at TheRefugeeArchive.org.

Help Preserve 21 Women’s Histories from Goma

The women raising families through conflict and displacement know what recovery will require. We are creating a record of their experiences, priorities, and hopes for what comes next.