Reflection-Storytelling

Challenge: Let's talk about storytelling. Last year I volunteered in a non-profit organization in Argentina that helps economically disadvantaged children to have access to education. This NGO depends on donations from companies and individuals who last year suddenly started to quit donating or cutting donations to half. There was no time for losing investments, it was the most challenging time in the world with the pandemic of the coronavirus and there was an urgent need to digitize and invest on technology in order to reach these children's homes and prevent them from quitting school, but donations were not coming in.

The first thing I needed was to talk to those companies, to start by the very first step: What is. What is happening here? Why are these companies flying away from this cause? The answer we were given was logic, the pandemic had a big impact on their economy, Argentina had an eight month quarantine and the impact was strong. After these talks, I had one more wish that my instinct needed to fulfil. I wanted to include, just for curiosity, a simple yes or no poll for all the employees of these companies. My mind was stuck with the most basic question, do they know who we are? Do they know that the company they work for helps children in poverty conditions to have a better future? Do they know they mean the world to us? Does the new intern know? Does the secretary know? Did all of them know how important they were for many children? Did someone in our company ever wondered that? Shocker: they did not.

Selection: We had a financial problem, that was a fact, but we also had a huge cause behind us that was poorly communicated. That's where we knew storytelling was the tool we needed. Storytelling connects emotions, characters and values with, in our case, donors. Storytelling was not about the list of things we had to do to solve an educational problem or the amount of money we needed, it is about conveying a message that had emotional connection and larger purpose. The NGO already had a cause, they needed to tell their story, the story behind the children they helped, and let each of those employees and donors know that they were changing someone's future, that they were part of our community.

Application: We knew that our audience had little awareness of how much they meant to us and to the children, they saw themselves as money providers, not part of an important change. We then started a process of creating a moment of reflection in each of them, letting them know they were a very important part of this cause and community. But what was the best story to tell? We chose the essence of our organization, the children's story. We didn't want to tell their story centered on the things that were wrong, the money they needed, the things that were lacking nor to make the donors feel they were to blame for anything or had a mandatory responsibility. That is why we came up with the idea of the “thank you letters”, in which each children wrote a letter to a donor or employee of the investor companies, telling their story and experience in the NGO, how it impacted in their lives, how important it was for them, the improvements they had made there and, specially, saying thank you for being a part of their journey. The purpose was to tell the organization´s story from their main characters voices in the most positive way possible. Storytelling was the tool between our economic problem and creating awareness and attachment to our cause.

Insight and Approach: This process took longer than I thought. As I agreed to help this non-profit organization, I was not aware of the time and dedication that design thinking takes. That was one of the things I learned on this journey. I also learned to value the What is step, with a good immersive investigation on the context surrounding

the problem, the solutions come easier. Storytelling is a puzzle, you need to find the right story to tell and the right way to do it. People are looking to be inspired, people like to feel they are an important part of change, but they want to feel involved and we were failing on that. With storytelling, connecting emotions with reflection and characters is possible, and it can help you to transform challenges into causes. As I was the only volunteer trying to solve this problem, I think that counting with the help of a team could improve the ideas and how to tell a better story.

