Application of Storytelling in International Development Programming

In the first quarter of 2019, a country in Western Europe gave $58 million to a specialized agency of the  United Nations (UN) called the International Labour Organization (ILO) for it to use the money to  programmatically combat child labour in the supply chains of cocoa, coffee and gold in Africa. After  preliminary research on child labour in Africa and several consultations with relevant government  agencies across African countries, the governing board of the ILO and the donor country unanimously  agreed to pilot the child labour intervention programme in Nigeria before expanding it to other Africa  countries. The decision was premised on the fact that Nigeria is the most populous African country and  research on labour statistics from the ILO Research department indicates that in some states in  Northern Nigeria more than 50% of children under 18 years who works on cocoa and coffee farms and  artisanal gold mines. I was working at the programme unit of the ILO and the National Programme  Coordinator of the project saddled me with the responsibility of creating a report and consequent  presentation to persuade all stakeholders to summarily green light the project.

Given that all stakeholders of such a programme are diverse and includes representatives of the donor  country, governing board of ILO, government agencies and civil society organizations, I’m aware that  traditional tools for communicating development challenges like information from literature reviews,  data analytics and reporting will not be enough to motivate all and sundry and hence, I decided to go to  the field, collect some data, and in addition, look for touching stories of children subjected directly and/  or inadvertently to forced labour. I took a virtual course on design thinking before being assigned to this  task and totally believe that if I apply design thinking in understanding the root causes of the child  labour challenge in Nigeria, I will be able to obtain inspiring stories and will easily weave those  narratives to my report and presentation, which would capture the emotions of all stakeholder and  make them commit to implementing the project.

Of course, I consulted the literature and researched relevant labour data while gathering exhibits for the  report but more importantly observed and interviewed children who labour in cocoa and coffee farms  and artisanal gold mines; understood factors that caused them to result into working for money at such  a young age; and came up with the persona of a child that works in such contexts as described above.

Obtaining information from literature, data analytics, and reporting have their place in international  development programming, and I believe these give a contextual understanding and conceptualization  of development challenges, but storytelling makes all stakeholders relate on a personal level with a  problem in question. In the case of deciding where and how fast a child labour intervention programme  should be implemented in Nigeria, the governing body of ILO and other stakeholders understood that  the problem of child labour is prevalent in North-central Nigeria and women often take their children to  those farms and mines and encourage them to work so that their employers can at least feed those  children. The stakeholders were persuaded by these stories and not by data alone.

I now understand that even experts can miss out on opportunities to solve development challenges  when they don’t understand a challenge from the perspectives of those affected directly by it. I believe  that the use of storytelling as my design thinking tool in the context I described above was effective. But  in case I have the opportunity to use storytelling in solving a development problem, I will employ the use  of pictures and if possible, videos to drive home my message. I will also invite a couple of children to  attend the presentation of my report and describe their ordeals while they work in mines and farms. I  believe that hearing such stories from the children themselves will be more moving.

