Narrative 4 Story Exchanges have been a wonderful medium for applying or practicing how to put one's privileges to work in a way that create opportunities for people who are less advantaged.
Educated and comfortable white people are often so busy feeling guilty and embarrassed about our privileges that we spend little time thinking about how to use them. We have access to money, time, and resources that less fortunate people do not.
I have found the story shares to be a wonderful way to create situations in which people with less power can find their voices, even become leaders. Story sharing entails having people pair up to hear each other's stories. Then everyone shares the story she or he has heard to a circle of about ten people.
Sharing and hearing each other's stories--and hearing one's own story through someone else's voice and filter--is very intense. One's sense of self starts getting punctured, infiltrated, as it were, by other people's lives. It is like living many lives.
Many youth are highly motivated to dive deeper into the process. So far I have trained about twenty people, most of them much younger than I am, in story facilitation, and I find that they tend to be much better at it than I am, certainly when they are working with youth.
I have the resources to learn about tools such as Narrative 4, pursue training, train others, and carve out opportunities for them to grow into larger and larger roles as facilitators and leaders. I guess that is what one of my friends who teaches courses in development would call "capacity building." How do we use our power in ways that creates power for those who lack much of it?
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