Home | Border Stories AZ

TELLING STORIES FROM THE U.S.-MEXICO BORDERLANDS & BEYOND

OUR WORK

Stories from the Border is a multimedia storytelling initiative and journalistic platform founded by Meena Venkataramanan and Vivekae Kim in the summer of 2019.

Check out our stories here.

01 / Our Mission

We hope to serve as a dynamic platform for the portrayal of manifold narratives from the Arizona-Mexico border region and to facilitate the engagement with these narratives by individuals across Arizona and the United States.

With support from Harvard University and Arizona-based community stakeholders – including non-profit organizations and journalists – Stories from the Border aspires to humanize the Arizona-Mexico border and provide insight into the diverse lives it affects by providing a space for individuals to share their personal experiences with immigration, asylum, and detention through a narrative and journalistic medium.

We seek to present these narratives to the public in an accessible, compelling, and informative manner. Ultimately, we hope to engage those in Arizona and nationwide to develop a fuller and nuanced understanding of the Arizona-Mexico border, promoting increased civic awareness and engagement at this juncture in our history.

02 / Our Stories

Click here to find our stories and articles on our Medium page:

MEET US

Vivekae Kim

Vivekae Kim is a journalist and a rising senior at Harvard University, studying social anthropology with a minor in history. She’s the editor-at-large for The Harvard Crimson’s weekly newsmagazine, Fifteen Minutes. Last summer, she wrote for PBS NewsHour Weekend, with coverage ranging from protests at the U.S.-Mexico border to underfunded crisis centers fielding calls from the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. Her central interests surround criminal justice reform and the court system in the context of immigration.

When she isn’t writing, you can find her curating her Spotify playlists, practicing Korean, or in a Neolithic-era technology Wikipedia rabbit hole. In the future, she hopes to continue to both pursue journalism and work in immigration and civil rights law.

Meena Venkataramanan

Meena Venkataramanan is a journalist and a rising senior at Harvard University pursuing a joint degree in English literature and South Asian studies. She is passionate about the intersection of law, politics, and journalism. Meena has reported for POLITICO and ABC News in addition to contributing to a FiveThirtyEight feature series. She also founded the South Asian Americans in Public Service (SAAPS) initiative at Harvard, through which she brings prominent American public servants of South Asian descent to speak at Harvard and has launched a journal of South Asian American civic thought, of which she is editor-in-chief.

In her free time, Meena enjoys reading and writing about American political trends, First Amendment issues, and English literature ranging from Transcendentalist verse to contemporary American fiction. She aspires to become a political journalist and legal scholar.