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YW - Story-down walls!
Start date: Aug 1, 2016, End date: Dec 31, 2016 PROJECT  FINISHED 

In the more and more hostile European environment towards ‘the others’, nonprofit organizations need to go over the glossy stories they are used to tell about their work, to leave aside the wooden language, to really listen to the ones they try to help, and to tell ‘their’ stories, and not what donors or supporters need to hear. The organizations need a shift in their stories for two important reasons: first, the community sustainability - any organization needs an open, tolerant, supportive community, willing to help ‘the others’; second, financial sustainability - any organization strives for financial sustainability that implicitly means to ask people to give away, with an open heart, their time, their money, and other resources. In both cases, people (supporters, volunteers, staff, clients, partners, donors, general audience, media) need to understand perfectly the organization’s work, and they need to be motivated to give their support to ‘the others’. They need to experience strong emotions, those that will make them act and react. Powerful stories can have this effect on people.Thus, the nonprofit organizations need a long-term storytelling strategy that enhances the power of understanding, caring, helping, healing, and unfolding the complexity of the world. This strategy should be sustainable, and innovative, and adaptable to each group one organization interacts with.Story-down walls! TC aims at professionalizing youth workers from nine Programme Countries (Norway, Romania, Poland, Spain, Turkey, Italy, Lithuania, Bulgaria and The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia) in developing long-term storytelling strategies for their organizations, in order to reach community and financial sustainability. The specific objectives of the training course are:-Equip the youth workers with the skills needed to understand and build inspiring personal stories, their clients and their organizations’ stories;-Equip the youth workers with the skills needed to tell meaningful and convincing stories to their donors, partners, community and media;-Support youth workers to develop long-term storytelling strategies for their organizations;-Develop youth workers’ digital competences by teaching them innovative digital tools / methods / platforms / applications for storytelling.Thus, the 29 participants in the Story-down walls! TC will learn not only how to write and tell inspiring stories, but first they will learn to understand their own story (personal stories, clients’ stories, and the organizational story); then, they will identify and build powerful and meaningful stories for each group of stakeholders: donors, first circle stakeholders (staff, volunteers, clients, and partners), and general audience (community, and media); and finally, they will learn how to capitalize on the stories they tell, in order to gain the community and financial sustainability they need, and thus fight against the current hostile European context towards ‘the others’. The learning process will include simulation exercises, teamwork, presentations, interviews, role-playing, stories, discussions, hands-on techniques, and digital and online tools of storytelling. At the end of the training course, the youth workers, based on the competences developed or improved (communication, cultural, social, entrepreneurial, civic, and digital competences), they will connect better their organizations to the community, and to the relevant stakeholders; they will be able to build long-term relationships with the key stakeholders, raising the social capital of their organizations; they will improve the organizations’ communication and fundraising activities; and they will improve the image of the organizations, raising the profiles of these in their communities. The youth workers will be able to build stories that break-down the “walls” or narratives of intolerance, discrimination, fanaticism, racism, radicalization, hate, etc. They will be able to tell inspiring, powerful, meaningful, simple stories about their complex work with and for migrants, refugees, people living in poverty, unemployed youth, young people with disabilities, children coming from low-income communities, and people discriminated based on their ethnicity or religion. Through the power of stories for change and transition, the participants will open the dialogue on European values with their relevant stakeholders: clients, donors, institutional partners, media, and community as a whole.
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