© 2024 University of Missouri - KBIA
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations
Here Say is a project in community storytelling. We travel to a new place each week and ask people to share true stories about things we all experience: love, family, learning, etc.Click here for a full-screen or mobile-ready map.00000178-cc7d-da8b-a77d-ec7d2fad0000

Here Say: Your Stories about Fun, Told at The Centro Latino de Salud

Sara Shahriari
/
KBIA
Nathan Roberts

Here Say is a project in community storytelling. We travel to a new place each week and ask people to share true stories about things we all experience: love, family, learning and more. To see where we've been, check out our interactive map. And to hear your favorite stories from last season, you can find our free podcast on itunes.

Nathan Roberts is the chef for Centro Latino’s cafeteria. He told us he traveled to Alabama this summer to work on a roofing project - yes, roofing, in Alabama, in the summer - and had great time thanks in part to forging a strong connection with the homeowner.
 

"It was hot, super hot down there, but it was pretty fun.The lady’s house that we worked on, her name was Ms. Hudson. She’s 93 years old. The reason why we were working on her house is because she couldn’t afford to get her roof redone. We were working on her house specifically because she did a lot of like community work when she was younger in her community, so we decided to give it back. It was through a thing called Raise the Roof, down in Mobile, Alabama, and they invited our church to come down there. So we drove all the way down there. That was a 12 hour drive down there. Mobile Alabama is at the bottom of Alabama. While we were down there we gained like a great connection with Ms. Hudson, which is the owner of the house. She was pretty cool...I was her favorite."
 
 
 

Credit Sara Shahriari / KBIA
/
KBIA
Santiago

Santiago is nine years old and part of Centro Latino’s Active and Fresh summer program. He recently confronted his fears at an amusement park.

"There was this roller coaster with water. And I went on it that. Cause they told me don’t be scared. And I went on it and it was so fun cause you went up and then you went down and then you turned around and then you went up and then you went *shhhh* and then you went down and you splashed! It was awesome!"

 
 
 
Erica Lee has happy memories of summer fun and games with friends in the very small town where she grew up.
 

"Usually my day would start, I would wake up and do my chores. Once  my mom  would say, “You free to go,” I was out until the street lights came on. Playing. Riding bikes, you know, just like a little gang of kids. Just up and down the street, just playing and running around and being very active. This is my favorite game. It was called Red Rover. There was a line of kids facing each other and then you'd call somebody over and they’d try to run and break the line that you had. And that was fun, it was so fun!"

 

 

Victoria Buescher says a recent trip to Nicaragua pushed her outside the world she knows, and encouraged her interest in being a doctor and medical mission trips.

Credit Sara Shahriari / KBIA
/
KBIA
Victoria Buescher

 "The trip I took to Nicaragua last summer, because it was unlike anything I’ve ever done before. It was really out of my comfort zone. But because of that, it like really helped me grow a lot and it taught me a lot. But it was also a lot of fun, just to see how there’s like a whole other world out there, so different from what it is here. And to be able to help people."

 

 
Christopher Rodriguez coordinates Centro Latino’s program for kids like Santiago, who we heard from a few minutes ago. Christopher spends a lot of time thinking about how to make healthy living fun for kids. He also just graduated from college, and is finding new ways enjoy life.

Credit Sara Shahriari / KBIA
/
KBIA
Christopher Rodriguez

"It’s a different type of fun. It’s more of appreciating, just having little social gatherings now where my friends  come over. It's all financial right now. Because it's always expensive to go out with your friends, and go drinking. So I have just learned to appreciate how to just be at home with a couple friends, just hang out, and watch a movie, things like that. Things that I wouldn’t do before because I thought they were boring."

 

 
 

Abigail Keel is a senior student at the Missouri School of Journalism. She is originally from St. Louis, Missouri and grew up hating the drone of public radio in her parent's car. In high school, she had a job picking up trash in a park where she listened to podcasts for entertainment and made a permanent switch to public-radio lover. She's volunteered and interned for Third Coast International Audio Festival in Chicago, IL, and worked on the KBIA shows Faith and Values, Intersection and CoMO Explained.
Sara Shahriari was the assistant news director at KBIA-FM, and she holds a master's degree from the Missouri School of Journalism. Sara hosted and was executive producer of the PRNDI award-winning weekly public affairs talk show Intersection. She also worked with many of KBIA’s talented student reporters and teaches an advanced radio reporting lab. She previously worked as a freelance journalist in Bolivia for six years, where she contributed print, radio and multimedia stories to outlets including Al Jazeera America, Bloomberg News, the Guardian, the Christian Science Monitor, Deutsche Welle and Indian Country Today. Sara’s work has focused on mental health, civic issues, women’s and children’s rights, policies affecting indigenous peoples and their lands and the environment. While earning her MA at the Missouri School of Journalism, Sara produced the weekly Spanish-language radio show Radio Adelante. Her work with the KBIA team has been recognized with awards from the Society of Professional Journalists and PRNDI, among others, and she is a two-time recipient of funding from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.