Nick O’Connell
+1 224 500 2707
nick@migrantsofthemed.com
www.migrantsofthemed.com

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Together For Humanity: Seeking Partners To
Document The Migration Flow

Humanitarian storytelling publication seeks to partner in its campaign to
document & humanize the migration flow to Italy.

ROME, ITALY 2 July 2019 – Migrants of the Mediterranean (MotM) invites advocates on migration-related topics to partner in its continued effort to document the migration flow in the Central Mediterranean through its framework of humanitarian storytelling.

Recently, MotM introduced the newly expanded section of its story archive in Italian (accessible here). This archive contains migrant journey stories, which were previously only available to read in English and in very limited scope in Italian, from the time of the publication’s inception in autumn 2016 when the work on Lampedusa island began.

Now, with these stories more widely available to read in Italian, the goal of Migrants of the Mediterranean is to help raise migration as a humanitarian issue to the national level in Italy and the EU, where often there is still a lack of understanding about what people on the move go through and why they decide to leave their countries.

There is therefore room for Migrants of the Mediterranean to become a valuable component of a larger campaign aimed at humanizing migration flows and finding viable solutions around them. And to do this MotM wants to partner with established organizations, people, and political parties in Italy that have long been advocating or reporting on these issues.

Migrants of the Mediterranean asks you to contact the publication directly with any inquiries about how a partnership to publish further testaments and stories can be established, and how its advocacy and fieldwork can be useful in the development of your own platforms and initiatives.

Humanitarian Storytelling
The mission of Migrants of the Mediterranean is to see the trauma people have suffered on their journey and in daily life in Italy and Europe as a reality we see as our own. Only by understanding the crisis of humanity before us are we equipped to address it.

Migrants of the Mediterranean uses the framework of humanitarian storytelling to present the individual migrant’s journey, from country of origin to Lampedusa and greater Italy, documenting both the difficult means of travel across Sub-Saharan and North Africa and the extraordinary human rights abuses faced in Libya, including slavery and torture.

Migrants of the Mediterranean believes that by illustrating the undignified and dehumanizing passages people have had to make from Africa, the Middle East and elsewhere, in the name of safety, freedom and opportunity, we can develop empathy for the other.

Migrants of the Mediterranean also understands that by documenting the stories of some of the world’s most vulnerable, the work contributes to a more complete historical record.

###

About Migrants of the Mediterranean
Migrants of the Mediterranean is an online humanitarian storytelling publication that documents the journeys of the individual people who have crossed continents, countries, the Sahara desert and the Mediterranean Sea from their countries of origin to the Sicilian island of Lampedusa––the southernmost European land point from Africa in the Central Mediterranean.

The archive was developed to restore dignity to those who have had it stripped away during travel and trafficking, particularly across Libya where extraordinary human rights abuses, including slavery and torture, have been endured. It is also an account for the historical record. The journey story archive stands as a document from which we can index the realities of migration for some of the world’s most vulnerable at this pivotal time.

Migrants of the Mediterranean founding writer and Italy correspondent, Pamela Kerpius, personally greets arriving migrants in Lampedusa and in cities across the Italian peninsula for one-on-one interviews. Her storytelling continues across the mainland after people are transferred from Lampedusa, often the place of first reception, and documents issues of daily life and integration in Italy while individuals await asylum hearings and their subsequent results.

Read more about Migrants of the Mediterranean at: www.migrantsofthemed.com.