MHRC Steering Committee members Dr. Minal Giri and Dr. Maria Ferrera partnered with renowned filmmaker Dr. Chi Jang Yin, a professor in the College of Computing and Digital Media at DePaul University. As recipients of DePaul’s HumanitiesX Collaborative Fellowship, they engaged digital media and documentary filmmaking to promote human rights and the work of MHRC. In the spring of 2022, they co-taught a course titled, Children Seeking Asylum: Creating Digital Media to Support Human Rights, in which students from various disciplines learned about the history of immigration in the US, the asylum-seeking process, and how to professionally create digital media content. Students in this course produced the short educational films that have been featured throughout the MHRC website. This project and the HumanitiesX Program is funded by the Andrew Mellon Foundation. You can learn more about this course project here.
We have many people to thank, including:
- The DePaul (Spring 2022) students who created these short films:
- Jayla Chatman, Estefania de la Torre, Aaron Dombrower, Katie Drypolcher, Isabella Hackley, Esther Iluyomade, Arabella Johnson, Jamila Jusino, Hannah Matthews, Noah McCarty-Slaughter, Devin Thompson, Samuel Traxler, Jennifer Vasquez, and Sabrina Wilson.
- The practitioners, attorneys, and advocates who were willing to be interviewed:
- Sioban Albiol, Director and Senior Professional Lecturer, Asylum and Immigration Law Clinic, DePaul College of Law, Yessenia Castro-Caballero, Pediatrics Hospitalist and Co-Founder of Loyola MacNeal Medical Forensic Program, Marisa Chumil, LCSW, Co-Director, Child Advocate Program, Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights, Rebecca Ford-Paz, Clinical Child Psychologist and Co-Director Forensic Assessment for Immigration Relief (FAIR)Clinic, Lurie Children’s Hospital, Kathryn Hampton, Deputy Director, Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) Asylum program, Aimee Hilado, Ph.D., LCSW, Former Founding Director of the RefugeeOne Wellness Program and Assistant Professor, University of Chicago Laura Hoover, Attorney & Executive Director, Children’s Legal Center, Gary Mart, MD, Adult, Child & Adolescent Psychiatrist, MHRC Evaluator, Rev. Craig B. Mousin, JD Adjunct Faculty, Refugee and Forced Migration Studies Program, DePaul University, and Ida Salusky, Licensed Clinical Psychologist and Research Associate, Northwestern University.
- Thanks to Hannah Matthews and Aaron Dombrower (CDM ‘22) for editing and helping to produce each of the films and Jonathan Michael Castillo, Photographer and Visual Artist (https://www.jonmichaelphoto.com/), who spoke to our students about his work and shared his photos for this project.
- Special thanks to the HumanitiesX Collaborative Fellowship Program and the Fellowship Team, including:
- Lisa Dush, HumanitiesX Faculty Director, Margaret Storey, Associate Dean, DePaul College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences, Deborah Siegel-Acevado, HumanitiesX Coordinator, Harrison Horst, HumanitiesX Coordinator, and HX Student Fellows Laura Pachon and Emerson Sherbourne.
Short film by Devin Thompson and Isabella Hackley
This film by DePaul students Devin Thompson and Isabella Hackley was unedited in order to showcase the original footage they produced, their unique and creative perspective of the powerful stories of asylum seekers, and the work of MHRC. In this short film, they feature the voices of Laura Hoover, Rebecca Ford-Paz, and Ida Salusky, who provide compelling accounts of the resilience and hopefulness among asylum seekers.