Maria Talero of Climate Courage uses organic, peer-to-peer storytelling for community engagement on social justice issues, especially climate action.She assists community engagement events where the audience engages in a carefully curated personal story-sharing process to deepen the impact of featured organizations.
WHAT: Maria Talero is looking for partners and collaborators to help develop a pilot storytelling program currently called organic storytelling for social justice (this name may change). The goal of the pilot project (underway) is to harness the power of storytelling to weave communities together for collective action. I simplify and speed up the learning process for effective personal storytelling and shift the emphasis from performance (one-way storytelling) to organic story-sharing, where advocates exchange stories during community engagement events held in partnership with solution-focused organizations, in order to strengthen our collective emotional intelligence, resilience and capacity to take action. Depending on capacity and context, I also bring in a piece to help storytellers learn how to share stories across differences in political and cultural worldviews (a critical skill in our highly polarized times).
WHY: There is a gap in the ‘storytelling for social change’ movement, which succeeds beautifully in surfacing the lived experiences and voices of individuals and communities but sets the bar relatively high in terms of investment of time, cost, and skill. The emphasis on performance storytelling can sometimes inadvertently result in ‘leaving the audience out’ of the experience of sharing stories, making them passive ‘consumers’ of the storyteller’s product, the power of which gradually diminishes as story-based ‘products’ become the go-to communication strategy in social justice advocacy.
Maria thinks there is untapped potential in harnessing the power of storytelling for ‘horizontal,’ collective mobilization that can complement and deepen the impact of mainstream community engagement efforts.
We often underestimate how stressful and psychologically taxing social justice work can become and how easily advocates can wind up feeling isolated and discouraged in their change-making efforts, and conversely, how encouraging and refreshing it can be to participate in informal, peer-to-peer story-sharing dedicated to deepening our resilience and engagement.
A key component of my project (in process) involves creating cohorts of storytellers trained in resilience storytelling, who help model and scaffold the use of peer-to-peer resilience-based storytelling at community engagement events. These storytellers would gain a lifelong benefit from their training: storytelling as a ‘toolbelt’ communication skill, i.e. a skill that they can “wear on their invisible toolbelt” everywhere they go and can organically deploy in both personal and professional communication contexts.
ABOUT Maria Talero: She says:I’m a bilingual, Colombian educator, facilitator and consultant with 20 years’ experience in education. I design social learning environments that foster authentic, courageous communication and engagement on climate change as well as other social justice and environmental issues. I partner with non-profits, faith communities, and educational and grassroots organizations across the Front Range to deliver custom-designed community engagement packages in English and Spanish. I am a 2014 NAAEE Community Climate Change Fellow through the EPA-sponsored EE Capacity program as well as a 2017 recipient of the Outstanding Educator Award from the Colorado Alliance for Environmental Education.
Maria Talero, Ph.D. | Climate Courage, LLC | maria@climatecourage.cc
WHAT: I’m looking for partners and collaborators to help me develop a pilot storytelling program that I am currently calling organic storytelling for social justice (this name may change). The goal of the pilot project (underway) is to harness the power of storytelling to weave communities together for collective action. I simplify and speed up the learning process for effective personal storytelling and shift the emphasis from performance (one-way storytelling) to organic story-sharing, where advocates exchange stories during community engagement events held in partnership with solution-focused organizations, in order to strengthen our collective emotional intelligence, resilience and capacity to take action. Depending on capacity and context, I also bring in a piece that helps storytellers learn how to share stories across differences in political and cultural worldviews (a critical skill in our highly polarized times).
WHY: I see a gap in the ‘storytelling for social change’ movement, which succeeds beautifully in surfacing the lived experiences and voices of individuals and communities but sets the bar relatively high in terms of investment of time, cost, and skill. I think the emphasis on performance storytelling can sometimes inadvertently result in ‘leaving the audience out’ of the experience of sharing stories, making them passive ‘consumers’ of the storyteller’s product (the power of which gradually diminishes as story-based ‘products’ become the go-to communication strategy in social justice advocacy).
I think there is untapped potential in harnessing the power of storytelling for ‘horizontal,’ collective mobilization that can complement and deepen the impact of mainstream community engagement efforts. I think we underestimate how stressful and psychologically taxing social justice work can become and how easily advocates can wind up feeling isolated and discouraged in their change-making efforts, and conversely, how encouraging and refreshing it can be to participate in informal, peer-to-peer story- sharing dedicated to deepening our resilience and engagement.
A key component of my project (in process) involves creating cohorts of storytellers trained in resilience storytelling, who help model and scaffold the use of peer-to-peer resilience-based storytelling at community engagement events. These storytellers would gain a lifelong benefit from their training: storytelling as a ‘toolbelt’ communication skill, i.e. a skill that they can “wear on their invisible toolbelt” everywhere they go and can organically deploy in both personal and professional communication contexts.
ABOUT ME: I’m a bilingual, Colombian educator, facilitator and consultant with 20 years’ experience in education. I design social learning environments that foster authentic, courageous communication and engagement on climate change as well as other social justice and environmental issues. I partner with non-profits, faith communities, and educational and grassroots organizations across the Front Range to deliver custom-designed community engagement packages in English and Spanish. I am a 2014 NAAEE Community Climate Change Fellow through the EPA-sponsored EE Capacity program as well as a 2017 recipient of the Outstanding Educator Award from the Colorado Alliance for Environmental Education.
