Reflection-Storytelling

Challenge & selection

Storytelling is a fundamental tool that I use all the time as a social worker. I work with disadvantaged and  vulnerable women, men, youths, children and their groups/organization to realize their rights and improve  their wellbeing. Majority of these target population are poor, illiterate, ill health, poorly fed, oppressed,  psychologically tortured and disconnected with real world of quality services and other core aspect of life and  so, they need quality capacity building services that empowers, inspire and build their resilience. I create  quality and adequate time to provide psycho-social support to enable them speak up, share their daily life  experiences and challenges to enable development of result-oriented capacity development plan that  addresses specific needs of the individuals/groups. This will also allow for creation of a level ground to attract,  own, motivate and inspire them to become resilient and improve their wellbeing, social status and realize  their full potential. During engagements with students, series of academic and moral related stories from  different angle of life experiences are shared for various reasons and social needs.

After numerous engagements, they confide in me and begin to share their daily life experiences and stories  with me to find avenue to connect, discuss and find remedies. Most often these stories are share with me  when they are lonely and freely to talk and they would repeatedly say “I hope my story can change and inspire  other children’s or youth’s lives to grow upright with a vision and moral responsibility because I don’t want  them to go through the hell am going through now”. Then I begin to share my daily life experiences and  stories during school time with these students to enable them flashback, visualize, compare and contrast the  state of life and experiences both us got involved in or experienced. I would seek for responses or feedback  from them that I would use to compare the context of situations in the stories to ascertain their vision and  goals but also use their stories and feedback to understand their interests, needs, feelings, priorities, learning  and analytical skills and processes. I would then use these stories and feedbacks to develop need-based  strategies to try and find possible ways and remedies that work for the students to get more attracted, focused  and dedicated to academics and be socially and economically empowered and responsible.

Application

I used storytelling within my organization to discuss and develop capacity development strategies and plans  with management to provide quality capacity development services that is result-oriented. In sharing and  discussing to develop result-oriented strategy, I explained to the management the power and benefits  associated with adopting and using a beneficiary focused strategy to enable achieving a result-oriented  capacity development services that the organization had always desired. This strategy addresses the  uniqueness and diversity in human being when it comes to their needs, priority and so it recognizes that  addressing that critical need that the person desire is paramount to enable one easily realize their full potential  and improve their livelihood and wellbeing.  The need for this strategy was an utmost agenda as the  organization had been investing a lot of money on capacity building services with no real material effect being  felt in the lives of the beneficiaries. During this time, I also informed them that addressing the critical capacity  challenge or gap of an individual can unearth and rejuvenate a lot of other hidden potentials within the  individual that can impact and influence other people’s life for better due to peer-to-peer learning and  replications even though it may be extreme and costly at the beginning. I narrated also a story of a secondary  school boy, faced with school fees challenges and would take one meal in 24hours because His parents

never had enough money to cater for all those things but also because his dad was sick so every little thing  the family raises would be used for his medication. Every student in the school was doing well including his  other siblings in upper classes except him and 11 other colleagues. They got stressed, lost focus,  concentration and love for education to the extent of dodging classes, separating themselves from others,  bunking school and performing poorly and were prone to dropping out. The career master and the head  teacher got concerned and told the teacher in change guidance and counselling together with career master  that they needed one on one attention, knowing that those students would perform better than the rest given  their previous results when they first joined the school. The career master invited me every Tuesday and  Friday during lunch time when other students would be for their lunch, would call them in his office, boil tea  and buy for them two pan cakes each then begins to talk to them one on one while they also share their daily  experiences and thoughts. As the term was proceeding, these students started getting attracted to academics  and other school activities but also, four were best performer in their class including that boy during that year.  This boy got a scholarship from the school for His great performance. The boy’s father never recovered and  he was worried that if his dad passes on, his other siblings will drop out and their earlier efforts would be  wasted despite the sacrifice.

Insight and Approach

Great lessons. Story telling is a powerful tool as it expresses feelings, emotions and attachment of an  individual and how they are related with the circumstances at hand. The boy’s father was still bed ridden  even though the boy still continued to perform well and lead in his class. I knew it was time for me to tell him  my life story. I told him how worried and depressed I was when I lost my brother(guardian) after we found  him dead suddenly on his bed without any clear sign of sickness. I felt weak, lost hope about education and  with even no sign that my career would be furthered. I also told him how gained hope. I found a letter my  brother wrote to me before he was dead, saying “My younger brother and my friend, don’t worry about school  fees when am gone its not your responsibility to worry about that. However, it’s your responsibility to ensure  that your performance is the best otherwise, I was paying your school fees even when I didn’t know where  the money would come from at start but it happened that I managed to pay in time always”. And I studied  and finished my education without him paying me but those who values education and good performance did  that. From there we were on level ground and were together with this boy noticing how difficult my situation  was. The boy took a deep breathe and said its not important to worry about these thigs but its rather important  to work hard and move past these challenges. This boy needed this integrated psychosocial support which  is one on one and the support was timely and effective. He later on talked to the other siblings to be strong  and focused on the path they have chosen despite the challenges. Hope got restored and there was  happiness in the family despite their dad being sick and their education continued.

This story moved the management and individually, it had a big change in their life. The management are  reviewing and looking it other areas of the service delivery as a whole to change their strategies but also  there is plan to train line managers and team leaders to proper document stories from beneficiaries and get  their insights to improve planning and resource allocation.

This tool enabled me to understand the connections, emotions, relations and feeling individuals have towards  circumstances, events and one another. It clearly brings out the uniqueness in human thoughts, needs and  priority. From now I can use stories to better visualize and plan for the people I serve depending on their  needs.

