This blog is co-authored by AIF Banyan Impact Senior Fellow Disha Arora.
We tend to think of the stories that we tell about the past, especially accounts of the recent past, as objective. This could not be further from the truth. As the historian Hayden White points out, “events are made into a story by the suppression or subordination of certain of them and the highlighting of others, by characterization, motific repetition, variation of tone and point of view, alternative descriptive strategies, and the like.”[1] Even though we don’t think of it this way, the work of documentation in the development sector is historical. When compiling case studies or drafting conclusions for an impact assessment based on focus group discussions, the documentation professional, like the historian, gathers information about past events, decides which facts to highlight, and how to characterize actors. Just like the historian, it is important that we make intentional decisions about how we frame, or emplot,[2] people’s stories when writing in the development sector.
Why the Way We Tell Stories Matters
A key aspect of this framing is who we make the protagonist of our stories. In academia, research, and policy-making, the lives of communities targeted by oppression often only become visible through statistics, numbers, paperwork, and other impersonal mediums. Storytelling is a powerful means for going beyond numbers to explore the lived experiences that affect, change, and connect people.
Marginalized individuals and communities deserve the agency to tell their own stories. While language, literacy, and power barriers often still prevent this from being possible, we should endeavor to center their narratives as much as possible. If documentation professionals, as 21st-century historians, do this work to include and emphasize the perspectives and actions of people from marginalized communities, it can do a small part to counter biases which have systematically excluded marginalized communities from having their experiences included in official narratives and archives.
Stories look very different depending on who we frame as the change-making agent. For example, we can choose to tell a story about how a tribal farmer doubled their income after investing in a lift irrigation system with the help of a grassroots-level NGO or a story about how the NGO benevolently helped a tribal farmer double their income by providing a lift irrigation system, with a small financial investment from the farmer.
Instead of thinking of our role as the voice for the oppressed, it is imperative that we think of our role as the voice with the oppressed.
How Effective Storytelling Creates Impact
When marginalized communities tell their own stories, the impact is profound. A prime illustration of this is Khabar Lahariya, India’s only women-led digital rural news network, where journalists from marginalized backgrounds question structures of power, inequity, and injustice. Another similar instance where the oppressed and marginalized community take charge of telling their own story, and thereby effecting change, is Freely in Hope’s program in Kibera, the second largest slum in Africa. Freely in Hope sensitizes children about sexual violence, consent, and how to deal with the trauma. These programs are led by survivor leaders who’ve experienced similar stories. By telling their story, survivor leaders give power to others who may have experienced similar circumstances.
While we may not be able to replicate Khabar Lahariya or Freely in Hope’s work, we can learn from these organizations’ approach of platforming people who are normally not given the chance to tell their stories due to systemic barriers. Simply sitting to listen to a mother who struggles to irrigate her land and feed her children, the struggles of a landless laborer who migrates for work, or a victim of sectarian violence has an impact. When members of marginalized communities tell their stories, it both fundamentally alters today’s discourse and the way that future generations will view their past and future.
How the Stories We Tell Shape Our Other Development Work
Thoughtful storytelling is an effective strategy for creating an ethos of listening, support, and empowerment at the organizational level. Communications material will be the first way that new employees, funders, and collaborators encounter and come to conceptualize an organization’s work. When the communications materials change tone, this also changes the goals of new employees, funders, and collaborators. Development organizations often view projects as an opportunity to convince communities to adopt a series of practices or to convince a community that they need specific infrastructural improvements. When civil society organizations center the voices of marginalized communities in their communications, this should also push the organization to actually center the needs and aspirations of the communities they work in. To listen to marginalized community members’ problems and then decide which skills, resources, and perspectives the organization can leverage to support community members.
Footnotes
[1] Hayden White, “The Historical Text as Literary Artifact,” in The History and Narrative Reader, ed. Geoffrey Roberts (New York: Routledge, 2001), 223.
[2] White, “The Historical Text as Literary Artifact,” 223.
Bibliography
“About Us.” Khabar Lahariya. Accessed May 1, 2024. https://khabarlahariya.org/about-us/.
“From Survive to Thrive.” Freely in Hope. Accessed May 1, 2024. https://www.freelyinhope.org/.
“Maryanne: From Survivor to Child Protection Advocate.” Freely in Hope. Accessed May 1, 2024. https://www.freelyinhope.org/meet-maryanne/.
White, Hayden. “The Historical Text as Literary Artifact.” In The History and Narrative Reader, edited by Geoffrey Roberts, 221-236. (New York: Routledge, 2001).
