SMART Volunteering-Storytelling Guide

-21- Activities related to each part Part 1 Write your own story of life and/or work, thinking about how you can improve your story. For Example: My name is Adilah and I am from Morocco. I volunteered at a community cafe where I did great work. Working there helped me find a job. Compared to: My name is Adilah and I grew up in Morocco. I loved working as a chef there for many years. When I moved to Sheffield with my family, I began to miss sharing my food with others but I found it hard to find a job in a restaurant. So I decided to join a community café as a volunteer. When I cooked the café was always very busy and everyone complimented my food. I was able to practise my English language skills through working there and gain extra qualifications to recognise my skills; this helped me find an ideal job as a chef. Questions: Can you identify challenge , action and transformation ? Can you identify any of the other elements (passion, authenticity, emotion, description, connecting with the audience)? Try to do the same with people around you, and catch all the opportunities to test different stories or anecdotes of your life, and focus on how people react. Part 2 Tell participants to individually think about one story they have heard/read about and that they remember ever since. Ask each participant to think about the reasons why they still remember that narration and write down the elements that make the story to be memorable long after for each them. Now divide participants in groups of 4 or 5 people and ask them to put in common the elements identified and discuss about them. They must reach an agreement and decide which are the 5 elements they find more relevant to make a story unforgettable. One representative from each group will expose to the rest of the groups the common elements identified and the facilitator will discuss with everyone about their relevance making some questions to the participants.