In Farsi slang, a doreh is the people you grow up with, the circle you return to, share stories with, and belong to. It is your people.
Literally, doreh means a period of time, an era, a chapter. We explore different dorehsfrom a grandparent's life, one conversation at a time.
When we were naming this project, we kept coming back to the same idea: that what makes a grandparent's story meaningful is not just what happened, but who was there. The friend group. The circle. The doreh.
And the double meaning felt too perfect to ignore. Every interview we guide is a journey through a different doreh, a period of time in someone's life that shaped who they became. Childhood. A first job. A new country. A marriage. These are the chapters that make a life.
Coming together, learning from each other across generations. That is what Doreh is about.
Elijah Parsi is a Persian American who grew up understanding, on a bone-deep level, how much family matters. In Persian culture, family sits at the center of everything. The table is always full, the stories are always flowing, and the elders are always at the center.
Elijah has always been drawn to older generations. He loves his grandparents, not just as family, but as people, as sources of wisdom, humor, and the kind of perspective that only comes from a life fully lived. He genuinely enjoys sitting with them, asking questions, and learning things about the world that no classroom could teach.
That love is what Doreh is built on. He created this project because he believes every grandparent has a story that deserves to be heard, and every grandchild deserves the chance to hear it, before time makes that impossible.
The intake form takes ten minutes. The story it captures has no expiration.
Begin Your Chapter →