Cell phones become storytelling tools in the hands of immigrants

Every day Maria De Lourdes Gonzalez jumps on a bus on the way to work. She cleans houses for a living, but the rest of the time she’s telling stories about the people she meets on the bus.

“Si salgo a la calle, me pesco una historia y la agarro,” she says in Spanish. “If I go out to the street I catch a story and I grab it.”

Mobile Voices (Voces Moviles), an online multimedia platform that allows her to upload video, pictures, text and sound,  was created by day laborers, household workers, the University of Southern California, Drupal software Programmers and the Institute of Popular Education of Southern California (IDEPSCA). The program provides a virtual space for low-income people, particularly immigrant workers, to share their personal stories or those of others they encounter in their community.