Screenshot of one of the facilitated conversations. The participants were Pamela Molina from Washington, D.C. (top left) and Margareth Durán Vaca from Santa Cruz, Bolivia (bottom left), sign language interpreter Lourdes Cruz from Santa Cruz, Bolivia (top right), and journalists Natalie Van Hoozer (top center) and Fabiola Gutiérrez (bottom right). “Persisting in the Pandemic: Conversations between Latinas with disabilities” is a project that highlights the first-person stories of Latin American women with disabilities. During facilitated conversations, this diverse group of women talked with each other about how the coronavirus pandemic has impacted their daily lives. This article details why we decided to do this journalism project through facilitated conversations, as well as the logistics for using this technique. This project includes three other articles as part of the series: one providing an overview of the rights of women with disabilities in Latin America during the pandemic, another about what their lives are like outside the house, and the third on how the pandemic has changed their lives inside their homes. This reporting project was produced collaboratively by independent, bilingual journalists Fabiola Gutiérrez in Bolivia and Natalie Van Hoozer in the United States. As recipients of the ICFJ-Hearst Foundations Global Health Crisis Reporting Grant, we received mentorship and editorial support from Mexican journalist Priscila Hernández Flores, who specializes in reporting on human rights with an emphasis on diversity and disability. The grant also provided financial support from the International Center for Journalists and the Hearst Foundations. The publication of this reporting project is possible thanks to Global Voices. Instead of using the traditional model of a journalist interviewing someone, this project focuses on women with disabilities having conversations with each other, with journalists facilitating the discussion. We invited the six Latina women featured in this project to participate in order to reflect a variety of lived experiences in each interview. They talked to each other in pairs during three separate virtual conversations. We matched conversation partners based on the participants having different types of disabilities and different backgrounds, as some are immigrants and others are mothers and/or social leaders. When the conversation included a deaf person, we arranged for the participation of sign language interpreter Lourdes Cruz, who used International Sign Language, so that all interviewees could fully express themselves. We also took into account that each participant lives in a different location, either in the Western Global North (Spain and the United States) or in the Latin American Global South (Mexico, the Dominican Republic and Bolivia). The whiteboard of journalist Fabiola Gutiérrez, who is based in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, showcases a brainstorming exercise she did with her colleagues to decide the name of the project. Photo from ‘Persisting in the Pandemic: Conversations between Latinas with disabilities.’ This style of pairing participants allowed the women to create a safe space together. The dynamic established with the facilitated conversation process also helped them to relate to each other’s pandemic experiences, while at the same time letting them be curious about and appreciate their differences. Inspiration to break away from the standard interview format comes from the model used by StoryCorps. Specifically, the One Small Step initiative was a key reference for us, as the program is designed for people with different political views to interact with one another. Project co-author Natalie Van Hoozer had worked previously on One Small Step and recognized the storytelling potential of facilitated conversations. As a team, we believe in creating journalism that inspires empathy and solidarity. First, we created a list of potential conversation candidates, who we then invited for brief, half-hour individual video calls with one of us. This initial meeting was designed to tell each potential participant about the project, answer their questions, check that they were interested, and had the right conditions to take part, such as a quiet and well-lit space, and a good internet connection. Some candidates we talked to decided not to participate in a full conversation because they became sick with COVID-19 or had other health issues. The desk and papers of journalist Natalie Van Hoozer in Reno, Nevada, USA. Project mentor Priscila Hernández Flores guided Van Hoozer and Fabiola Gutiérrez through the process of editing and structuring the stories, which involved identifying findings from the facilitated conversations and reading story drafts out loud.