Funding will allow OHRO to expand its current project on Guantanamo Bay, which has focused on lawyers working on issues of detainee welfare and justice, to include testimony of former detainees and to their families, communities and advocates. Additionally, OHRO will explore new digital methods for making interviews publicly accessible and expand access to its historic archives. The grant will enable the creation of two new positions to support OHRO's interviewing work, and develop new strategies for making its collections, news, educational offerings and special lectures and programs visible and accessible to the public.
The Oral History Research Office, founded in 1948, has served since that time as a center for creation of standards of excellence in interviewing, archiving and teaching oral history worldwide. Mary Marshall Clark, Director of OHRO, said, "This crucial support from the Atlantic Philanthropies will allow us to expand our core capacity in ways that allow us to broaden our outreach and to develop the field of oral history globally. As we increasingly use oral history to account for the challenges we face in our own times due to the impact of rapid political, economic and social change on vulnerable populations, this affirmation of our mission could not have come at a better time."