Building capacity

Resumen

Introducing the concepts of storytelling and news gathering to communities can be really exciting and very rewarding.

Sometimes people think that it should be left to professionals but actually, communities already have lots of the skills and contacts needed to share powerful stories. For example:

• They can ask their friends and family
• They see and hear things that are happening in their communities every day
• They understand the latest issues and concerns in the area
• They can question local leaders and hold people to account
• They will often have had to be their own advocates and rise up against prejudice or injustice

When you are training and mentoring participants, it is very important to help them to understand that all of these things are valuable journalistic skills. 

What to ask:

• Do participants have the skills, access and resources that they need to share a story safely, securely and accurately?

What to try:

There are plenty of organisations (like us!) that offer training for community journalism and storytelling but there are lots of things you can do too.

• Set up your own workshops where you help them to make use of tools they have already to record stories – like mobile phones, computers and assistive devices. 
• Remind them that talking to their own family and friends is a great way to gather insights and stories
• Encourage them to record their own thoughts and experiences

Community storytelling training can be done in lots of different ways:

• As part of a workshop, or included when providing a service
• Pre-recorded video or audio training modules sent online or via mobile. This is a good option as it means people can learn at their own pace
• Interactive e-learning courses
• One-to-one discussions with mentors 

Every community is different so each training will need to be adapted and changed for that particular group. However, there are some key points that you might want to cover each time:

• How to use a mobile phone to record voice or send a text
• How to shoot video or take photos on mobile
• What stories would be useful for your advocacy or campaigns
• Interview skills
• How to use social media for research and sharing stories
• What to expect when sharing personal experiences
• Keeping yourself and others safe

It is not essential but if you do offer people some basic training then they will feel that you have invested in them. It will also really improve the quality of the stories that you gather from your communities. 

Qué explorar

You don’t need anything special to share skills with your communities. An accessible space, some good professional guidance and some decent biscuits will do the trick. 

However, if you are interested in taking it to the next level, you can explore online tools which allow you to build your own training courses for communities that they can access with their mobile phones. 

Learn.ink has a monthly fee of £75~ but you can build up to 5 courses and share it with up to 25 different community groups. You can see how participants are progressing and see their results too – this is really useful if you need to do a project report.

We also love the BigVu app, which allows you to write or upload a text script and then read it while filming yourself from your phone or device. Because the script scrolls by the camera you come out looking highly professional as it seems that you are talking straight to the viewer. 

Videos can be exported and shared immediately or edited with logos and subtitles. There is a free trial which is plenty for a one-off project.

Get in touch if you’d like to speak to On Our Radar about building a training course!