Stories of Change |
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The Barefoot Guide Approach
to Writing Stories of Practice Storytelling and storywriting about social change practice provide vital opportunities for social change leaders and practitioners to learn from each other and to share their valuable wisdom more widely. This short article describes the Barefoot Guide approach to working with communities of practice of such leaders and practitioners. Story Telling – Getting to the
heart of things Stories have immense power and are able to communicate things that lie way beyond the spoken or printed words used to tell them. This article explores the power of stories and storytelling as well as their application in a developmental practice. Rafting: Two kinds of leadership
This inspiring story illustrates of the difference between commanding and facilitative leadership, each compelling but in there a challenge to facilitators about what we support when working with organisations and communities. 
How to not meet an
organisation where it is at! A real story of how an organisatonal survey/evaluation can go horribly wrong if a few simple principles are ignored. Lying Dead in the Snow
A story of how an organisation was helped to see itself in a surprising way and by doing so transform itself. The Kathakali Man
A short story from Arundhati Roy's, The God of Small Things A beautiful and sad tale of a story-teller in India |
A Force to Contend With
One of my favourite stories is about a group of rural women who were assisted by a development agency to start a vegetable garden in their community. The primary intention of the project was to improve the diets of community members. But its ultimate achievements went much further than this. In fact the women learnt so much and took so much courage from being part of the group that their ambitions grew as fruitfully as their seedlings. Before long they were producing more than their families could eat and selling the surplus. Respectfully presenting themselves to their chief, they petitioned for, and got, more land. Then they yanked a bunch of local men off their butts and paid them to fence their new land and build a shed for their tools. It didn’t take long before their position in the community had changed as well. They had become a force to contend with. The women began involving others in their work and the project began to include widely divergent aspects of community life, both economic and political. In the end it was the success of their organisation rather than the vegetable garden itself that made the greatest impact on the community. (page 8, BFG1) Parachuting cats into Borneo! A Cautionary Tale
In the early 1950's, the Dayak people of Borneo suffered a malarial outbreak. The World Health Organisation (WHO) had a solution: to spray large amounts of DDT to kill the mosquitoes that carried the malaria. The mosquitoes died; the malaria declined; so far so good. But there were unexpected side effects. Amongst the first was that the roofs of the people's houses began to fall down on their heads. It seemed that the DDT had also killed a parasitic wasp which had previously controlled thatch-eating caterpillars. Worse, the DDT-poisoned insects were eaten by geckoes, which were eaten by cats. The cats started to die, the rats flourished, and the people were threatened by outbreaks of typhus and plague. To cope with these problems, which it had itself created, the WHO was obliged to parachute 14 000 live cats into Borneo. Operation Cat Drop, now almost forgotten at the WHO, is a graphic illustration of the interconnectedness of life, and of the fact that the root of problems often stems from their purported solutions. (Quoted in Rachel Wynberg and Christine Jardine, Biotechnology and Biodiversity: Key Policy Issues for South Africa, 2000) Whose assessment is this, anyway?
"This story comes from my days as a program officer with a Canadian international development organisation that worked through volunteers, providing accompaniment and training to build staff skills." 
The Man Who Planted Trees
First published in 1954 by Vogue magazine, Jean Giono's story has been translated into at least a dozen languages. It has since inspired reforestation efforts, worldwide. |
