STORYTELLING

Challenge & Selection

“When we know the facts about people, we know what they are. When we know their stories, we know  who they are.” - John Quincy Adams. I have worked with active young people to develop SDGs awareness,  entrepreneurial mindsets and 21st-century skills by conducting localized training workshops at a grassroots  level. However, it is very difficult to retain participants’ enthusiasm in our workshops, especially for those in  marginalized groups who are in challenges to connect with new friends and open yourself for sharing their  ideas when being in the crowds with more outstanding and confident youth. We were getting further and  further apart, and the number of people attending the programme was getting smaller and smaller while  our high target is that “Leave no one behind”. Until we have a Storytelling workshop, we know that it is the  great tool we need to engage and get our explorers back. Instead of starting the workshop with the boring  theory of topics, now we always begin with a check-in question “At the end of this workshop, you will be  happy if….” to know our audiences’ interest and thoughts. I also know that Storytelling helps to bring us  into the same page where we can listen, give feedback, share our stories, and get to know each other  meaningfully. With my personal development path, I share my story to help them visualize a state of failure,  sharing our experience and the way of improving my leadership skills. They deeply understand that our  success has the great story behind it which covers both happiness and failures. I collect their stories to help  them connect with others and find the ways to improve their leadership skills.

Application

When coordinating the workshop, I met a young person with a disability and congenital heart disease. He  also could not express his opinion fluently, so he was very inferior to himself and was afraid to share his  ideas in the workshops. of the program. At that time, I proposed to be his mentor and arranged weekly  online sharing sessions with him. I tell the story of how my journey came to my current job, how I struggled  when I was out of school, didn't have a network to take actions in social works, and how I overcame it. He  shared with me about his concerns when participating in the programme, motivation, and stories of young  people with disabilities, young people with heart disease and their desire to participate in social activities.  After 2 weeks, he is ready to take part in the workshop and I hope I do the rehearsal with him. I see him  more and more confident in expressing his opinions in the next workshops, sharing his story with others,  and he realizes his great concern with Climate change and Gender equality matters.

Insight & Approach

“Stories are how we think. They are how we make meaning of life. Stories are how we explain how things  work, how we make decisions, how we persuade others, how we understand our place in the world, create  identities, and define and teach social values.” (Dr. Pamela Rutledge, Exploring Positive Psychology)

Storytelling helps us to tell who we are by sharing moments that made us today or that clarified our values.  We teach a lesson to each other - how we learned something through failure or success, mastered an  organizational capability, or overcame resistance to change. We are motivated to change by creating  dissatisfaction with the present, sharing dangerous mistakes in business, establishing the case for change,  and creating a vision for the future state. Everyone has their own story, however storytelling helps us to be

on the same page, to change the frame such as allowing the audience to see a problem through a different  lens, and changing the emotional climate.

Most stories have a beginning, middle, and end, and our personal stories are no different. Whenever I want  to tell my story, I always remember the SOAR model which helps me to go in the right way and express my  feelings clearly.

S - Set the scene (Who? What? and Where?)

O - Obstacles were encountered

A - Action was taken

R - Resolution. How did it turn out?

Based on the SOAR model, I can practice my Life Map further which helps me understand where I am by  thinking about where I’ve been, and where I might want to go next. This could be geographic, cultural,  social, academic, professional, emotional, etc. I can look at my timeline and find out the next steps in my  study and career path.

