STORYTELLING

INTRODUCTION

I work with a women oriented and welfare organisation. We organise and hold  out camps at different parts of the country, rural and urban both. Our first  objective is to – encourage the victims, survivors and the warriors of sexual  assault, physical abuse or of any other forms of oppression to come forward  and share their stories with us and also with other such victims, raise their  voice against their abusers, and we also try & help them to report those  wrongdoers to the women crime investigation cells, that is if they’re ready to.

Our second main objective is to educate those girls and women regarding the  human and women rights.

CHALLENGE

As much as I love getting to do the things that we do, I am afraid I don’t share  the same feeling when it comes to the challenges that we are hit with quite  frequently than not. There are several challenges that our organisation has to  face, but the one challenge that stands out the most amongst the others is –  the challenge of how to develop a connection with the women reluctant to  speak up, less report the wrongdoers. We work with a mixed female  population. And almost half of the females who have been wronged comes  from  conservative communities. They live in a perpetual fear of being judged  by the society for opening up about the unacceptable deeds that were or are  still being done to them. And also, they are oblivious or ignorant of the women  rights.

TOOLS

The tool that I selected for my challenge is the Storytelling tool. This tool is  used to put the human beings and their experiences front and centre. Take  listeners along on their journey. Create a more vivid image of what we are  trying to convey.

The reason that motivated me further to select this tool was :                                I had a first hand experience with how effective can sharing stories prove to  be. When I was 17, I was as unwilling as those women to recount my own  experience with physical abuse even privately, let alone publicly. Then one day  my aunt shared her own share of experience with the same and how she got  her abuser behind the bars. Her story encouraged me to speak up and report  my now ex-boyfriend, the guy who did wrong by me.

APPLICATION

I applied this particular tool with many females, but I will just be sharing my  first attempt at this tool.

A 22 year old beautiful woman living with her mother and a sister in this small  village in the outskirts of Kolkata, a metropolitan city here in India. It was the  village our organisation was conducting a day camp in. Around 60 girls and  women participated, some were confident enough to share their stories with  us, and some of the females were a little disinclined. So, this girl was  humiliated at first to share her story, her hands were clutching onto one  another, and she was having a difficulty making eye contact with me.              But once I started sharing my very own story with her and the other females  there, she started to become more and more at ease as the story continued. I  told her how I am no longer scared to admit that I have been in a physically  abusive relationship where I’d let him make me feel like it was all my fault. And  then how one day my aunt’s story encouraged me to not only leave him but  report him to the local police station too. Even though he was locked up for  just a night, his parents, friends, and everyone he knew got to know the

monster he so carefully kept concealed behind the persona of ‘the perfect  boyfriend’.

Once I was done sharing my story and was almost done educating her and the  other women about their rights, this girl slowly stood up from her seat and  began sharing her story with us. Upon completing it, she said with a steel like  voice that she was going to tell that guy’s parents all about his inhumane deed  and also, report him to the village police station.                                                  This is how I applied the tool to tackle the challenge, by sharing my own story. I  used the tool to achieve the two major objectives of our organisation. With the  aid of this tool I empower those women and educate them to stand for  themselves and their rights because no matter how many times I scream my  truth at the top of my lungs, it will cease to free them. They need to speak up,  and have to reach out for help themselves, we are always there to extend it to  them.

INSIGHT

This was just the beginning of it. Many of the other members of the  organisation also adapted this tool. And the progress has been tremendous  since. This allowed me to build an affinity with those females, and liberate  them enough to trust me with their stories. Having even just one person share  their story of similar sort of incident can be very empowering and let the  listeners understand the message the speaker is trying to convey in a more   comprehensible way. This also let the one using this tool to better perceive the  problems of the listeners and other related challenges.

The application of this tool help me connect with those women and convey my  message without any misinterpretation.

APPROACH

The next time I will try and integrate this tool with other tools as well, like the  tool of journey mapping. I can use that tool to trace the journey of some of  those females, if not all as they go through the process of tackling against

oppression, speaking up, reaching out for help, in turn making the females  around them aware of their rights too.                                                                    This is going to be a long journey, one am ready to embark on.

