Our Mission
Providing dynamic programming inspired by the written word

Good question.
Hello, I’m Stacey Goldring, founder of Searching For Identity, a 501(c)3 non-profit.

In 2005, I wrote a memoir about an amazing woman, Carla Nathans Schipper. On Wooden Wheels explores how Carla and her two daughters survived the Holocaust by hiding throughout the Dutch countryside.

A few years after completing this incredible writing project, I got a call from a friend, asking me an interesting question.

Would you create a program for children of Holocaust survivors?
Drawing on my experience as a newspaper reporter, I created a one-of-a-kind workshop, built on a solid journalism writing method coupled with thoughtful, Socratic discussion.

The children of survivors who attend the workshop, known as the “Second Gen,” are remarkable people. Their writings accomplish two powerful things. Not only do they bravely document their parents’ profound survival histories, the Second Gen also bring to light and tell the world about the deeply personal impact the Holocaust has had and continues to have on their own lives.

Determined to give voice, validity and a platform to the Second Gen, in 2017, I established Searching For Identity. Today, the workshop thrives and includes survivors’ grandchildren. SFI continues to grow, producing: excellent documentary films, books and journals, public programs, educational videos and curriculum, art and literature programs and new this season, an SFI Second and Third Gen Support Group.

In addition, our award-winning 2023 documentary, Traces, Voices of the Second Generation, makes certain the Second Gen’s personal testimonies of historic importance will be shared around the globe.

Everyday, the urgency to document these stories grows more critical.

My love of art and the written word dates back the fifth grade, from the minute I read the first page of E.L. Konigsburg’s From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler.

Since then, storytelling has been woven into all I do, represented by everything you see on this website.

Take a look.

You’ll find amazing, meaningful projects, expressed through the written, digital, performing and visual arts. Each endeavor intended to bridge diverse communities, revealing the common bonds we all universally share.

Yes, its a lot.

And I love all of it.