Story-Telling as a Tool in Development work: Peacebuilding, Gender Inclusion, Community Processes…

Stories have a way of drawing people in.

What is Story-Telling?

Story-Telling is a powerful tool that can be used to draw out people’s experiences and stories in a manner that does not make them feel intimidated or pressured.Working with different communities can pose challenges to fruitful interaction of development workers (national and international personnel) due to the perceived and actual power dinamics. However, since story-telling is a free-flowing tool, it can be used as an ice-breaker (depending on the nature of the stories told), as well as a tool of collecting raw qualitative data.

What are the Advantages of Using Story-Telling in Community Processes?

• Different yet Similar: While each human being’s stories is unique in a way, there are many similarities of human experience. Stories help people ‘offload’ their experiences while creating new identities and comfort that is drawn from knowing that some of the experiences are similar to other people’s. In sensitive community processes where conflict, gender violations, human rights violations, personal experiences, etc.,  narratives need to be heard, story-telling can bring about healing, as well as new cohesion birthed from identification with other people’s experiences and a deeper understanding of each other.

• Non-Intimidating and Dignity-Preserving: There is a meme/ joke going around of a pupil who was given (together with others) a composition/essay to write based on self. The student was graded 5/40 by the teacher. The question in the mind of the pupil: “is the teacher me?” “does the teacher know more about me than I know?” In relation to this joke, Story-Telling gives people the freedom and confidence to tell this story without fear of being graded. Unlike with other forms of data-gathering where a person is required to answer a set of questions (which can feel intimidating or tailored, hence affecting the feedback the person gives), story-telling does not feel intimidating or overly structured to the story-sharers since a person is in control of how, where and what to share of his/her story. As such, the information can be shared freely and comfortably.

• Story-telling is one of the tools that can be used to draw raw qualitative data especially when people do not feel constricted by strict guidelines such as those that come with other forms of data gathering. Raw and authentic qualitative data puts a human face to the assumptions/ statistics/ insinuations that are baseless.
   

• Without straining people, free-style story-telling can easily help people draw out (and understand) privileges (advantages, stepping stones) that they can start working on/ from to advance their situation as well as that of others.

• Without straining people, story-telling can help people draw out and document forces that have disadvantaged them. This would enable people pin-point exactly what to work on instead of being all confused and lost in a quagmire of un-identified disadvantages.

• Data gathered from story-telling can and should be used to inform course of action for sustainable impact.

Challenges of Using Story-Telling as a Tool

• Time-consuming
• Unforeseen unpleasant happenings: Sometimes, some stories may trigger emotional reaction from the person sharing the story (if they re-live their moments, and this could end the session abruptly) or from the recipients of the story. Facilitators may need to be prepared and know how to take appropriate action to minimize negative consequences of such stories.
• Stories may be only one-sided and subjective, hence run the danger of the recipients forming opinions (unfair) especially if there is no follow-up.

Where and When can Story-Telling be Used?

• During gatherings that have people of different social statusquo, an introductory (or consequent) story-telling can swiftly break the ice as the story draws people (dissolving differences, albeit only temporarily) and bring people’s minds to the same frame/ context.

• Data-collection, especially the collection of qualitative data.
• Conflict Analysis or situational analysis exercises
• During Monitoring and Evaluation exercises

(I will add more details to the above points later…)