Social Media Week Lagos 2019

Research conducted by the Stanford Social Innovation Review showed that 96% of U.S.-based nonprofits considered storytelling to be an important part of their communications.

The Women s Technology Empowerment Centre (W.TEC) hosts Storytelling Techniques For Amplifying Social Impact, a skillshare session that teaches nonprofits, civil society actors, activists how to use storytelling techniques to tell compelling and powerful stories about their work, in order to connect with new partners and engage more meaningfully with existing stakeholders. We will explore relevant technology that helps to build and strengthen online communities of current and potential donors and supporters.

Storytelling is a method of explaining a series of events through narrative. It permits you to collect the feedback from the members of a community on specific aspects of their lives. In such a way storytelling helps you define better the needs and problems of the community you are working in and gives you a deeper insights of the dynamics of the process in it.

Crafting a compelling and effective story that will prompt people to support and engage with a cause requires a certain level of skill and commitment, which small organisations especially might not feel they possess. Digital tools have also brought a new dimension to the format in which stories can be told and how far they can reach.

This session will be led by two social entrepreneurs with experience telling the stories of the causes which they have been involved with. It will cover:

Why storytelling is important for nonprofits in creating, amplifying and sustaining social change
Storytelling as an evaluation and reporting tool
Review of case studies of powerful storytelling
Techniques of how to tell a good story
Types storytelling media and formats
Ethical considerations
How to build storytelling into an organisation s operations

This practical skills share session will have participants working on activities that include:

Interviewing / Story-Collection Techniques
Crafting Compelling Stories Sharing Stories for Impact with Digital Tools

Key Takeaways

An understanding of how storytelling can help them share their work better and get important stakeholders more engaged
Identifying how and which technology that can help to tell and share stories
Storytelling best practices

COMPANY DESCRIPTION:
The Women s Technology Empowerment Centre (W.TEC) is a Nigerian nonprofit organisation focused on encouraging girls to pursue technology careers and supporting both girls and women to use technology confidently for entrepreneurship and to speak about issues affecting their lives. We build the capacities of Nigerian girls and women, to increase their economic power and ability to speak about issues affecting their lives, through technology training, mentoring, work placement and research. W.TEC works in partnership with local and international NGOs, educational and research organizations. W.TEC incorporates storytelling techniques as a tool to encourage more girls to pursue technology careers.