The project’s headquarters are located in Calle Las Damas no. 34, Zona Colonial, Santo Domingo, República Dominicana. The COHP maintains thirty-one offices, manned by volunteers and spread out all over the island of La Hispaniola. All offices are equipped with a soundproof booth and recording equipment by gracious donation of the government of Japan.
The project is led by anthropologist and botanist Dr. Isadore X. Bellamy Pierre-Louis. Interviewers — by far our largest team — are coordinated by ethnomusicologist Dr. Franklin Genao. Poet, linguistics expert, and literary scholar Dr. Sinny Carrasco, oversees the work of translators and transcribers. Curation is a joint effort of all team members, including volunteers, who read the stories online and vote. Stories are never lost — votes only move them up or down in the priority level. Winners get to be transcribed, translated, and published before the others.
The COHP has been the grateful recipient of important grants, endowments, and financial pledges by many supportive institutions, chief among them The National Endowment for the Humanities, The Guggenheim Foundation, The Ford Foundation, The Martí Endowment for Culture and the Arts, and The Corripio Reconstruction Fund. It also survives thanks to the kind support and generous donations of individual persons like you.
Our logo is the vévé representing Papá Legbá, an important loa in Haitian vodoun. Legbá speaks all human languages and is the guardian of the threshold to the spirit world, where the secrets of the Earth are kept. A vévé is a religious symbol that acts as beacon, a signal for the loa to come. By it we are reminded of our values and goals, always bearing in mind that just as Papá Legbá, the great elocutioner, facilitates communication, speech, and understanding, so must we.
