Arete sent our specialist trainers to CARE International country offices in Somalia to show programme staff how to produce their own exceptional stories in the field. We delivered bespoke storytelling workshops, which sought to empower Somalis to tell their own stories and promote a storytelling culture among CARE staff that resonates with the Somalis’ storytelling heritage.
We worked closely with CARE’s communications team to ensure that 22 people from all of CARE’s offices were enabled to tell exceptional stories themselves.
The workshops covered a range of skills including storytelling through photographs, editing photographs, collecting and developing human interest stories, audio recordings, telling stories via social media, using smartphones to take photographs, sending content back to a central storage account, and supporting the objectives of CARE’s programs through audio-visual content.
The workshops took place in March, with a one-day follow up workshop and presentation to the Nairobi office. An internal Facebook page was set up so that staff could share their stories and photographs, and give each other feedback. The Facebook page is extremely active and all participants post regular photographs of their work.
Care International head office now has access to the photographs and their teams are using them across their advocacy material internationally.
Care International is considering extending our Smart Stories training across all field offices in East Africa.
