The EWHP is pleased to announce a new partnership with the National Collaborative for Women’s History Sites. The Collaborative is moving its offices to the Evanston History Center and will be headquartered in Evanston.
The Collaborative’s mission, to support and promote the preservation and interpretation of sites and locales that bear witness to women’s participation in American life, fits nicely with work already begun by the Evanston Women’s History Project to mark the places where local women’s history happened. Lori Osborne, Director of the Evanston Women’s History Project and Collaborative board member, says that this new partnership “brings Evanston and its significant women’s history onto the national stage, and gives the Collaborative a supportive home to grow its reach and influence.”
Though a young organization, founded in 2001, the Collaborative has built a strong network of women’s history sites throughout the country and has partnered with the National Park Service (NPS) and other national organizations for outreach and education around doing better women’s history at historic sites. In 2012 it led Telling the Whole Story: Women and the Making of the United States, a workshop held to formulate new goals for the National Park Service to increase and enhance women’s history in its parks, historic sites, National Historic Landmarks, and National Register properties by researching, documenting, and interpreting diverse women’s history. The Collaborative is currently working on a series of webinars called Doing Women’s History with over 80 participants from NPS sites throughout the country and soon these will be available to all Collaborative member sites.
Collaborative board president, Dr. Heather Huyck, notes that “it is our view that women, as half the population, were certainly present at almost all moments and places in American history. The Collaborative works hard to encourage and advocate for better women’s history at all historic sites. In many ways, the Evanston Women’s History Project has done the same kind of work on the local level and so the Evanston History Center seems the ideal home for the Collaborative.”
Begun in 2007, the EWHP continues to document and celebrate the significant achievements of Evanston women and women’s organizations. The EWHPs current projects include collaborations with local organizations on International Women’s Day, and FrancesWillard@175, a year-long series of events to mark and celebrate the 175th anniversary of Frances Willard’s birth in 2014.
For more information about the Collaborative, visit ncwhs.org.