Gale Hall is a retired early childhood professional (MA, ECE – Fairfield University) who recently moved from New Hampshire to southern Arizona.  During her career she worked on state and national early childhood and family literacy initiatives and advocated for young children, families, and their teachers.

     She ended her career as a professor of Early Childhood training students to be future teachers. Upon moving to Arizona, she began making quilts for newly immigrated children staying at a welcome center in Tucson. There she became involved with the Art of Asylum exhibit featuring the artwork of children, most of whom had immigrated from Central America in 2019. She was moved to develop an interactive curriculum that helped to immerse and engage participants in the authentic stories being told in that art. As she saw herself in their stories, she realized that this could easily been her. She felt that the artwork of children coming to the U.S. had found and transformed her.

     In 2020 she and Michelina, in collaboration with Episcopal Migration Ministries, created an interactive retreat called Leaving Home: Immigration Through the Eyes of Children. (***just click on the Home tab on this website for more information) The retreat focuses on the impact of forced migration from a child's perspective. It explores the trauma children experience by leaving their homes, navigating the immigration system, and starting over in a new country. As participants immerse themselves in the experience, they develop empathy that moves them to a positive action on behalf of these children and families. 

     Gale was asked to create the 2020-2021 Migrant Quilt which was on exhibit with 20 other quilts in the collection at the AZ Historical Society. The lives of 225 people who died that year in the Tucson sector of the Sonoran Desert trying to reach safety in the U.S. are memorialized in the quilt. The clothing of migrants collected on established trails in the desert were used to make the quilt so that the lives lost as a result of policies such as Desert as Deterrence could be commemorated. https://www.migrantquiltproject.org.

          In 2024 the Arizona History Museum exhibited the Welcome Quilt Project  developed by Gale. People of all ages from around the country draw messages of welcome and hope onto fabric squares that are sewn into quilts. The quilts are publicly displayed offering a counter narrative to the negative rhetoric about people seeking asylum. Voices from the Border champions the project as part of their mission of creative activism. Learn how you can make your own quilts and/or bring the exhibit to your community by emailing Gale at welcomehomequilts@gmail.com.

     Ever since Gale has been involved in border ministries she has wanted to write a children's book about the courageous journey that families make when seeking asylum in our country. She began writing Lili's Quilt in 2022. 

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