Exciting Opportunity for Alzheimer’s Patients

Over the next few months, The Story Corps Memory Loss Initiative is looking for some brave souls to begin recording personal, caring conversations with participants living with memory loss, using their newly released Toolkit, Commemorate.

 The Face of Memory Loss is Changing!

StoryCorps Commemorate interviews are designed to be forty-minute recorded conversations between two people about their lives. These forty-minutes devoted to listening and sharing can empower participants as they speak about their life, on their own terms. The value of the recording lives on as a legacy for friends and family to treasure.

StoryCorps has been recording such interviews since 2003 – over 30,000 to date. Nearly 2,000 of these interviews were recorded as part of their Memory Loss Initiative, which focused resources on providing this experience to those whose memories are fading away.

The Commemorate Toolkit provides employees, volunteers, and family caregivers with the expertise StoryCorps has accrued over the

 past 7 years, enabling people across the country to develop a culture of storytelling in their communities and provide meaningful personal, interactive activities to elders.

Offering those with memory loss the opportunity to share their wisdom and assert their identities through Commemorate interviews is perfect way to continue our work of providing elders the chance to live full and vibrant lives.

If you’re interested in this project, visit StoryCorps’ website to download the Toolkit for free: 

www.storycorps.org/mli

The Toolkit comes in two parts: (1) the full text of the guide, and (2) a selectionof digitized tools and edited interview segments to assist you in conducting your interviews. The Toolkit will walk you through the necessary steps toward recording your own interviews:

-the StoryCorps interview method;

-instructions on selecting and using recording equipment and choosing recording spaces;

-suggestions for making your interviews easy to implement and most effective;

-guides for interview participants which prepare them for the experience

And you should start small, too! StoryCorps is just looking for volunteers to record 2-4 interviews each to start. See how it goes first – and let us and StoryCorps know how you made it work.

Feel free to contact us at memoryloss@storycorps.org