The stories presented here are the culmination of preparatory stages of collaboration and discussion, several rounds of conversations, informal chats, addas, and complementary material collection. At every stage of this process, the priority was to have the shapes of the narratives and stories guided by those who were telling them, those who wanted to share them, and the resulting collection was made possible by not only participation, but crucially, direction from and collaboration with them. The project team worked in concert with neighborhood residents, community members and organizations to listen and to select the stories.

Specific components of the involved an inception meeting and grounding exercise to orient the team, discussions with community organizations and members, visits with neighborhood and camp residents in Mirpur and Mohammadpur, mid-project evaluation and discussion, collection of complementary materials. The final collection includes the stories, complemented by archival documents, images and documents shared by the participants, photographs from present day Mirpur and Mohammadpur. Majority of the work was completed in the period from autumn of 2019 through spring of 2020, with the remaining portion finished after COVID-19 lockdowns were eased.