Crowd Celebrates Kickoff of Sacred Stories
An energetic crowd of more than 100 gathered for the Oct. 1 public kickoff of the Sacred Stories Project, a five-year initiative, that aims to create spaces for young adults in their 20s to share and celebrate stories of faith, vocation and identity. Guests gathered outdoors at Westmont Downtown | Keith Center to connect over charcuterie and view featured artwork by young alumnus Diego Castañeda ’26.
“We'll use stories and storytelling as a way to bring people, churches and nonprofits together, as well as different Westmont departments, and really emphasize hearing from young adults who have such stories of wrestling with important life questions,” said Laura Turner, who directs the project.
Aaron Sizer, who directs the Gaede Institute for the Liberal Arts, emphasized the collaborative and exploratory vision behind the initiative. “The project is designed to explore the vocational stories of young adults in our community, and especially the ways that those stories interact with nonprofit organizations in town and Christian congregations in town,” he said. “This crowd is much of what we might hope for in this program — that it would be a meeting place for people from Westmont, local congregations, nonprofits and Westmont alumni who are doing good and important things in town.”
Looking ahead to the project's conclusion in 2030, Turner envisions a lasting legacy built on shared human experience. “Each year we'll partner with a different church, nonprofit and Westmont academic department,” she says. “My hope is visually we will have a mosaic of all the differences coming together in ways that people have found themselves longing for God, longing for community and longing to understand their lives — thickening the fabric of community and relationships here.”
Lilly Endowment Inc. awarded a nearly $5 million grant for the college’s Sacred Stories Project, one of 60 U.S. organizations that received grants through the endowment’s National Storytelling Initiative on Christian Faith and Life.