*All training times are Eastern United States.

Stories that evoke empathy (rather than sympathy) reveal a whole person and don’t reduce someone to a problem or a circumstance. They center the person with lived experience rather than an organization that has provided care or assistance, and they offer context to help the reader or listener understand not just what happened, but why.

During this interactive and skills-based workshop, participants will explore these ideas in-depth, and practice crafting a story that emphasizes each of these elements from a provided interview transcript. After sharing their stories in pairs and small groups, we will discuss the ways that participants’ experiences and perspectives led to the creation of different narratives, even when using the same source material, and what this means for working with patients, clients, and community members to document their stories.

This is a workshop, not a webinar. We’ll spend the entire time doing activities in pairs, small groups, and as a full group, so your participation is critical and attendance for the full workshop is required (i.e., no late arrivals). The training is 4-hours long, which will include a break in the middle. Spaces are limited to keep this workshop small and interactive.

Who should attend this workshop? This workshop is perfect for anyone working in a position at a nonprofit, legal services, or health care organization where they are writing stories for their organizations or are working directly with clients / patients / community members to document and share their stories.

*The registration fee is per person. If you’d like to register more than one person from your organization, please enter the number of people you are registering in the “quantity” field below. If you want to register more than three people from your team, please reach out to book a custom training for your organization instead. After registering, you will receive a calendar invite within 48 hours that contains the training Zoom link.

*All training times are Eastern United States.

Nonprofit, legal services, and health care organizations frequently tell stories in response to an immediate need—a reporter calls, an event is coming up, or a funder requests one. And then the organization goes looking for an individual story that matches the request. When this happens, the narrative—and the goal for sharing it—is predetermined before the person at the story’s center was ever involved.

In this webinar, we’ll look at ways to move beyond this posture of reactive storytelling and explore ways to involve individuals and communities in setting your organization’s storytelling agenda in more meaningful ways. We’ll touch on creating speakers bureaus and storytelling groups, investing in documentary-style projects, re-allocating funds to support existing storytelling projects in your community, and other ways of ceding storytelling control.

This “enhanced webinar” will take place over Zoom. Half of the time there will be a presentation where participants are encouraged to turn off cameras and listen. The other half of the time we will be engaged in conversations and activities that require active participation.

Who should attend this webinar? If you’re thinking how to change the culture of how your organization tells stories, this webinar is for you.

*The registration fee is per person. If you’d like to register more than one person from your organization, please enter the number of people you are registering in the “quantity” field below. If you want to register more than three people from your team, please reach out to book a custom training for your organization instead. You will receive a calendar invite within 48 hours of registering that contains the training Zoom link.

*All training times are Eastern United States.

For centuries, we’ve told each other our stories to build connection and community. During a story circle, a small group of people gather to each share a personal story about a specific topic or theme. In a story circle, there is no audience; everyone shares, and everyone listens with complete attention. Once everyone has told their story, participants comment on the strengths and power they see in others’ stories and draw connections between others’ stories and their own. They are a powerful tool for seeing others and for being seen.

Story circles have a rich history – from Indigenous communities who used them to draw out communal experiences and make decisions for the good of the community to the Free Southern Theater that used story circles during the Civil Rights Movement to open dialogue around the topic of race and create theater pieces to reflect those stories back to larger communities.

The purpose of a story circle is to build or strengthen a sense of community within a group, to examine differences, and / or to explore social challenges through our own lives. Organizations can use story circles to build and strengthen a sense of community between their staff members and/or between community members, as well as to gain insights and perspectives from community members on social and policy issues that inform the organization’s services and advocacy work.

During this workshop, participants will first participate in a story circle and then learn how to facilitate one themselves. Note: Story circles are a community-building and perspective-gathering tool, NOT a tool for gathering stories for marketing purposes. The workshop is 4-hours long, which will include a break in the middle. Spaces are limited to keep this workshop small and interactive.

Who should attend this training? Anyone who wants to learn more about this community-building tool.

*The registration fee is per person. If you’d like to register more than one person from your organization, please enter the number of people you are registering in the “quantity” field below. If you want to register more than three people from your team, please reach out to book a custom training for your organization instead. After registering, you will receive a calendar invite within 48 hours that contains the training Zoom link.