American Idol Season 6: Greatest Hits (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
This is third in a series of posts about how we understand and assess the impact of leading social entrepreneurs and other game-changers (First and second can be found here).
There is a radical new business model out there. We see it in examples as diverse as American Idol, Yelp and Kickstarter. Side-stepping the opinion of “experts,” these platforms move expertise and decision making to the consumer, customer or participant. This paradigm shift has led to a flowering of innovation and transparency around quality, access and impact. Social programs struggle (and agonize) over the balance of expert opinion, scientific evidence, and client perspectives. The social sector could learn a lot from this new participant-as-decider paradigm.
Alisa del Tufo had heard stories over and over of battered women staying or leaving their abusers because of their children. Wanting to understand how children are affected by abuse and how being a mother impacts women’s decisions to stay in or leave abusive situations, she decided to conduct research using the traditional survey. But she soon realized that maintaining the objective distance required by a survey would not allow her to understand the broader contexts, nuanced situations, and progressive changes in feelings and environments faced by these women. So Alisa decided to use oral history and storytelling to identify patterns and gain insights that would enable her to design effective early-intervention programs.
The experience of talking with 45 abused women and the insights they shared led to a transformation in the way Alisa thought about her work. Developing strategies that were based on the voices and stories of survivors themselves became the basis for major policy initiatives and the beginning of Threshold Collaborative, an organization she founded that uses deep listening and story gathering to create change. Though she had begun by seeking information, she ended up building trust, discovering deeper insights and creating better policy.
Alisa now sees oral history as far more than a simple recording of events. The connection between a listener and a storyteller, she found, knits the fabric that can strengthen empathy, generate ideas, and ignite action. In telling their stories, people develop awareness. They begin to experience control over their lives in a different way because they see they can control – to a significant extent – the elements of their stories. This process can be equally powerful for the listener, as from this sharing emerges a powerful intimacy. The process of telling and listening can both become transformative.
There is something primal about storytelling, for stories are part of what make us human. Every culture in the world uses stories to make sense of the world, to pass down social norms, and to understand history. The act of listening, as any child knows, validates a person’s place in the world and bears witness to his/her experience. It is no accident that oral history has been a part of the healing process for victims of grave injustices, as documented, for example, in slave narratives and stories of Holocaust victims. Alisa recently founded Groundswell, an emerging network focused on the use of narrative for social change.
Giving people a voice in framing their own narrative engenders greater trust between participants and organizations serving them, thereby improving programs that intend to aid them. It is not enough to simply collect information through surveys and focus groups when the process of collection fails to draw on the expertise of participants and inhibits human connection and the possibility of transformation.
We must find ways to engage people in a relationship of trust – where they decide who the winners are.
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