Stories for Impact

Our projects are driven by a communities’ desire to influence the services and policies that matter to them and to shape the public narratives and behaviours that affect their lives. 

Our job is to create pathways for community stories and insight into advocacy and research, media and communication, delivery and design. 

Lived experience is powerful and too often it is missing from our local, national and global conversations. By capturing and sharing our stories and journeys, we can inform and shift public attitudes as well as shape the decision-making of services and institutions. 

But tracking the impact of those stories can be challenging. Part of the challenge lies in being able to point to tangible changes to attitudes, policies and services. 

It’s notoriously hard to measure shifts in that way that people think – who knows what happens in each person’s mind when they scroll through their social media feeds and pause to read a story, or how the guy reading the Sunday papers over breakfast really feels about the article he reads. Without asking, we don’t know and people don’t like to be polled after every story. 

Occasionally someone will fund a big piece of costly research about public opinion on individual topics and issues and these can be really helpful in helping us to forecast what the impact of stories might be but it can never be an exact science and apart from comments and shares, the community reporters are unlikely to get any direct feedback from the majority of those who interact with their stories. Explaining this to communities is important. They need to feel strong in their decision to tell their story to the world and feel secure about it being out there without much feedback. We always explain that they may never know the impact their stories have on people’s opinions or actions but we can be bold in putting new narratives out there to shake up the stagnant stories and challenge stereotypes. 

Tracking the impact of community stories on policy and services are also hard. Getting access to information on impact from inside service or in situations can be challenging and slow, particularly public and government departments. And big institutions are slow to change. We often get reporters to picture a huge tanker slowly turning around. And that pretty much sums it up. Institutional change takes time and a lot of effort and this can be disheartening and frustrating for participants but each bravely shared story, documented concern, voiced suggestion is contributing to change. Once again, managing expectations is key and reminding them that they are together in a collective effort to turn that tanker around.

When measuring impact, we look across three levels – micro, meso and macro – and I’ll explain each one now.. 

First, at the micro level, we look at the impact on the direct participant engaging in the community reporting and research. These can be private wins, such as speaking in a group for the first time, making new friends and engaging in new interesting networks, or improving their own skills and self-esteem. Many find that their role gives them a new status in their own household and community, which is particularly important for those who have felt excluded or overlooked. For some, their engagement can be transformative. We have seen community reporters go on to become global advocates of some of the world’s most pressing issues, others have used their experiences reporting to win scholarships to study masters’ programmes, and for some the space to speak up and be heard, and tell their truth, has enabled them to work through personal trauma. 

At the meso level, we are looking at the impact on the community around the participants – those they represent and that might benefit from the increased visibility from the reporting activities. Reporting can help to document issues that might have otherwise gone unnoticed, help to evidence the need for action and help build pressure on authorities to respond to issues and realities that people might be facing. When firing on all cylinders, community reporter networks can act as incredibly effective accountability mechanisms – they can be helpful to authorities by providing accurate information that might otherwise be hard to collect and can also ensure that communities don’t get overlooked at key decision-making moments..

At a macro level, we are looking a far broader benefits of the model – at the national, perhaps even global level. Community reporters can trigger significant shifts by being whistleblowers and revealing news of public important. They can act as eye-witness news feeds at the centre of emerging events and crisis. But in a quieter, slower way they can help to chip away at harmful stereotypes, and bring to light invisible harms. That provides enhanced knowledge and evidence to support wider shifts in the way societies think and act, and that in turn will have a direct and positive impact on the communities themselves. 

There are ample opportunities for community reporting and research to have impact at all three levels but you should always be realistic and honest about what your project and your reporters can and might achieve. You will lose trust if you over-commit and plans fail to materialise. Many factors will be out of your control so avoid making promises that may not be in your capacity to deliver on. By shaping your project around investment in individuals you may find the other two levels emerge organically, as they go on to do brilliant things with their new skills and role as a reporter or researcher. However, it’s great to look at the wider potential for impact and be ambitious. As we’ve seen in previous modules, citizen journalism has shaken up the world over the last decade!

The most important role for community organisations in this work is to help bridge the gap between the communities who want to speak and the influencers who need to listen.

There will be different audiences for each of your projects – government and policy-makers, services, the general public, your own community groups and members? Think about who the audience is – how can you help to get community insight in front of that audience in order to have the most impact? 

Good stories can and should inspire, inform and persuade (and when appropriate entertain!). But understanding which is appropriate for which audience is important. Is it aimed at other individuals from within the communities you are working with to inspire them, help them feel less alone or raise awareness? Or is it a particular lobby group or a wider sector that you want to target so they make better informed decisions? 

There is no point producing a dense 50-page written report if you are trying to raise awareness with young people about drawing the line in abusive relationships. They are simply not going to read it. But create a safe online site for them to access stories and share via Instagram and Facebook and you are sharing the same insight with a far greater reach and potential for impact. Similarly, there is no point in producing a feature documentary if you are trying to advocate for pregnant women to attend antenatal clinics throughout their pregnancies in rural Sierra Leone. Without data or device access, that insight falls far short of reaching that community. A short audio story sent to local radio would be a far better route. 

Think about how to meet your target audience where they are; help your reporters to think it through with you. What format might be best? What length and tone? What moment is best to send and share it? By weaving these questions into your co-production you can help reporters to shape their stories for impact.

As well as your role in guiding reporting, you can act as a bridge for your reporter network to be seen and heard. Even the smallest organisations have access to networks that might be inaccessible to individuals in your communities. Local partners, local government, services, funders, professionals and perhaps even local and national media contacts – are all in positions of power to amplify the stories shared by communities. By reaching out to these networks and sharing stories and insight, or even better, weaving them into your project plans.

Telling and sharing a story can be an incredibly difficult act of bravery. Going out capturing others stories is also challenging and asks a lot of someone – as connected organisations we owe it to the communities who put their trust in us to ensure that their words, solutions and ideas do not disappear into the ether, or worse…. end up on page 100 of a report which no one ever reads. 

40% of agricultural land in Bangladesh will be lost due to a 65cm sea level rise by the 2080s. About 20 million people are already affected. In the agricultural delta regions of Bangladesh, farmers are facing incredible challenges with increasing floods and the negative effects of soil salinisation linked to sea level rise. The impact of these combined land and coastal changes on food production are woefully underrepresented in the media. Many people migrate to major towns. Others have developed innovative climate-smart floating farms: a sustainable practice in which crops and vegetables are grown in soil-less floating platforms constructed from aquatic weeds.

We partnered with a Bangladeshi NGO to explore the mounting national concerns related to the climate crisis and took these issues back to the communities to unpack them through a series of workshops. This helped us to connect with individuals who were living through both the challenges and actively engaged in creative solutions. Building on the insight shared, we worked with the communities to co-produce an immersive media series, told in the words of communities feeling the harshest impacts of climate change.

Combining their lived experience with our professional production skills, we were able to illustrate their narration using 360 videos and pictures, Google Earth historical satellite images, and drone imagery to capture flourishing floating gardens. 

While there is a desperate narrative emerging around the climate crisis, this series celebrates an innovative community solution that draws on the resources and capacity of communities to sustain their livelihoods and contribute to future models of agriculture. It was hugely successful in reaching a global audience with BBC sharing the video, which has had almost 3 million views on Facebook and over 600k views on YouTube. 

Now as we’ve already mentioned, these numbers are brilliant but tracking the impact of the stories of those 3mil+ people is completely impossible. What we DO know from a wealth of research is that there is a lack of connection in public minds to the issue of climate change – people don’t see it as urgent, or relevant or view it as a priority. Others deny there is any issue at all or are confused about the facts. A recent report showed that most of the climate narrative had been about plants and animals and overlooked the horrendous impact on humans that is already very real for communities around the world. So in sharing these community stories around climate change we can make an informed assumption that it was helping to humanise the issue and bring people a fresh angle. The focus on the community-led solution was also important as it helps to reframe climate-affected communities as agents of change rather than passive recipients of aid and support. This is challenging stereotypes and every story helps to turn that tanker of public opinion and institutional bias around.

It is also critical that these stories are heard by those with the influence over the climate agenda and, in December 2020, the film was screened to world leaders and activists at the Climate Ambition Summit as an example of what can be achieved through community action. Getting a community story into big summits, meetings and events can be a great way to shift awareness. These short stories often stick in people’s minds well after the slides and statistics have faded away. With the 26th UN Climate Change Conference being held in the UK this year, there is a very significant moment for communities to have their voices heard and ensure that the critical decisions made don’t leave them behind.