PARTNERS & PEOPLE
PICTURED:
Left: India Aubry, President, Voices from the Border
Right: Maggie Urgo, Outreach Coordinator, Voices from the Border
Partners Voices from the Border is a Proud Partner in The Welcome Quilt Project!
Direct Migrant Services
We are a 501(c)(3) nonprofit with a mission to provide humanitarian aid for migrating families in Nogales, Sonora. We rent and furnish a\ block of apartments that provide safe, comfortable housing for primarily women and children who were awaiting entry into the U.S. and now, increasingly deportees. Our Migrant Services Team, coordinates and provides free medical care to those who would otherwise not have access.
Supporting & Promoting the Arts to Spread Awareness and Empathy
The second branch of our mission, on the U.S. side of the border, uses the arts as a vehicle for “creative activism,” aiming to create a more holistic and empathic understanding of the lived experience of migration. Starting with our flagship cross-border event, Mothers Across Borders in 2017, Voices has sponsored a variety of creative endeavors and events.
For example, in collaboration with Sierra Club Borderlands, we created Peek Behind the Curtain, a live interview podcast series with the founders of The Border Chronicle, Todd Miller and Melissa del Bosque. A recent Peek Behind the Curtain featured well-known authors, Gary Nabhan and Luis Urrea.
Becoming Partners in The Welcome Quilt Project
In 2020, Voices organized Leaving Home: Migration Through the Eyes of Children, a ten-day series of migration-focused events. Its centerpiece was an exhibit called Hope and Healing: The Art of Asylum, featuring artwork by children of asylum seekers staying at Casa Alitas in Tucson. The exhibit was paired with Gale Hall’s curriculum centered on lessons of empathy and belonging. Nearly 100 local school children participated, creating “Welcome Squares” directed towards the migrant children whose art was on display.
During the COVID “pause,” Gale created eight Welcome Quilts from those fabric squares and gifted six to Voices. Voices recognized the importance of these quilted expressions of welcome—especially from children to other children—and their potential to help build a movement around immigration that emphasizes welcoming over demonizing immigrants. The rest, as they say, is history. We showed the quilts to the Arizona History Museum in Tucson, where they were subsequently exhibited for nearly a year. Now, the idea is catching on nationwide, with people in local communities making quilts, developing exhibits and spreading the message.
THE WQP TEAM
Gale Hall, Creator
Gale Hall is a retired early childhood professional (MA, ECE – Fairfield University) who recently moved from NH to southern AZ. During her career she worked on state and national early childhood and family literacy initiatives and advocated for young children, families, and their teachers.
She ended her career as a professor of Early Childhood training students to be future teachers. Upon moving to AZ, she began making quilts for newly immigrated children at Casa Alitas in Tucson, AZ. There she became involved with the Art of Asylum exhibit featuring the artwork of children, most of whom had immigrated from Central America in 2019.
“The artwork of children immigrating to the US has found me and transformed me. I was moved to develop an interactive curriculum that helps to immerse and engage participants in the authentic stories being told in that art. As I see myself in their stories, I realize that this could easily have been me. I hope that participants will ask – Now that I know, what can I do? I hope the experience helps to bridge our humanity and make us better people.”
Gale was asked to create the 2020-2021 Migrant Quilt which was on exhibit with 20 other quilts in the collection at the AZ Historical Society . The lives of 225 people who died that year in the Tucson sector of the Sonoran Desert trying to reach safety in the US are memorialized in the quilt. Clothing of migrants collected on established trails in the desert were used to make the quilt so that deaths resulting from the Desert as Deterrence and other US policies could be commemorated. https://www.migrantquiltproject.org.
The AZ History Museum in Tucson exhibited Gale's Welcome Quilts, a project championed by Voices from the Border as part of their mission of creative advocacy around immigration. In an effort to counteract words of hate and fear, quilts contain messages of welcome and hope from people across the U.S. to those seeking safety and asylum. The year-long display entitled "Welcome Quilts: Migration, Art and Hope" closed in April 2024. The exhibit, along with its accompanying curriculum, is now available to travel to venues across the country. (For more information, contact Collections Manager, Jace Dostal at jdostal@azhs.gov)
In 2024 Gale wrote and Michelina illustrated the children's book "Lili's Quilt" which focuses on the journey of a mother and daughter coming to the United States.
Contact Us
To find out how to create a Welcome Quilt that can be displayed in your local community center, hospital, school or college campus, food bank, church, or library, please fill out the contact form here or email Gale Hall at welcomequiltproject@gmail.com