Hello out there!?!

My name is Anna Willman and I'm working on an oral history of the Confidence Clinic in Roseburg Oregon. I need your help.

If you were a participant or a staff member at any time in the Confidence Clinic's history (1971 to the present), I want to interview you. If you helped start the Clinic or were involved in the early years of PAC (Parents Action Council), if you volunteered to help or partnered at any time or have a family member who was involved in any way, I want to hear from you. You can add to this blog and give me your contact information, or you can e-mail me directly at awillman@mcsi.net.

I'm interviewing people on video tape to create an archive of information about the Confidence Clinic. I will also include in the archive any information you choose to leave on this blog. I'm looking for the whole truth about the Confidence Clinic, not just a string of success stories. I want problems unresolved as well as problems that found solutions.


A summary of the project follows:
The Confidence Clinic was begun by a group of low income women in 1969 to help themselves overcome barriers that they recognized were holding them back. Today the program still retains the essence of that original support group - a community of women voluntarily working together, creating a space of trust and mutual support, learning new skills, and helping themselves and each other.

After 37 years and more than 100 sessions of the Confidence Clinic, we believe it is time for a look at what we have accomplished and how we have done it – a time for drawing lessons from this rich reservoir of experience that can ensure a future for our program and for others like it.
We propose to videotape and transcribe interviews of past participants, teachers, volunteers, and staff from all stages of our history from the original founders up to the present.

We want to get these amazing women (and men) talking about the Confidence Clinic – telling us stories about successes and challenges, triumphs and failures, barriers and breakthroughs. We want to find out how curriculum was developed, programs designed, students recruited, partnerships formed, and finances managed. We want to hear stories of women challenged, problems addressed, conflicts resolved (or left unresolved), and all the consequences of different decisions made over the years. We want to hear how outside factors influenced the development of the program and how internal strengths and weaknesses worked to create the program and the solutions we are familiar with today.

Please blog with me. I welcome your comments and I hope you will all respond to each other to continue to build this rich reservoir of knowledge.

Anna Willman