Help Youth Find Power in Their Story

The Unfold Your Own Myth Project is a serial workshop model in self-expression and community reorientation. It uses as its catalyst a feature-length, animated film aimed at teens and young adults, called "Lamya’s Poem." The film tells the story a Syrian refugee girl who receives a book of poetry by the 13th Century Poet, Rumi. She carries the book in her backpack as she flees her country’s civil war. The book becomes a magical gateway across time and space. Through it, she meets the young Rumi when he was teenager, fleeing the violence of his time. Lamya’s experiences help him to write the poem that 800 years later saves her life.

The Unfold Your Own Myth Project uses this film as a vehicle to communicate and teach the Power of Story in overcoming trauma and loss among marginalized youth. The audience for this project includes three struggling communities in America — refugee, immigrant and Muslim.