The Facing Project at UCLA will focus on gender and sexuality as it enters its third year on campus. After two successful years under the guidance of the Chiefs of Staff of the Community Service Commission (2014 - 2016), The Facing Project at UCLA has finally registered and been approved as a campus organization -- partially funded by USAC, continually supported by CSC, and fully run by undergraduate students -- with the ultimate goal of connecting people through stories to strengthen communities.
UCLA's model enlists a team of writers to be paired one-on-one with students who have come forward to share their story to better educate the community around them. After their pairing staff writers and storytellers together meet on regular basis, getting to know each other, and building on each other's strengths and weaknesses. This relationship allows staff writers to form the significant bonds that enable the writers to take on the first-person voice as narrators of the anonymous creative nonfiction pieces as if they were the storyteller thmselves . Through these student-told stories, the project aims to convey and explore what students have done and overcome to get to where they are today.
At the end of each year, the project will culminate into a published book, distributed among the community, comprised of all the various written stories. Facing Project, both the larger organization and its UCLA branch, hopes that sharing such stories will help spread awareness about various issues to unify communities and promote discussion to help inspire social change.