SMART Volunteering-Storytelling Guide

Introduction « How do we define storytelling? » It is about communicating to make your voice heard, to get stakeholders (partners, funders, collaborators, participants, media, the general public, people with similar interests, etc.) to join in and act on their behaviour. Why communicate by telling a story? Because a story, in contrast to information presented in a purely rational and factual way, combines reason and emotion. Storytelling allows those who receive it to understand the general meaning of the message(s), to better memorize them and to become their spokespeople in their environment. It is an incarnate, sensitive communication, which gives as much to see as to hear, to touch, to smell and sometimes to taste! It is this emotion-and-reason combination that makes all the difference with a purely descriptive, rational, cold communication. Emotion speaks to the heart and thus arouses interest, allows us to project ourselves, to identify ourselves, to remember better. Reason helps to keep balance, to temper emotions. The two are complementary. It is all about proportion. This is why we find it essential to use this mode of communication to relay the stories of SMART Volunteering project participants, whose main aim is the development and the implementation of innovative practices and initiatives, allowing migrant & refugee women to effectively integrate into the European societies. The use of storytelling will be a powerful tool to achieve different objectives such as the creation of a comprehensive European Competence framework bridging the needs of third country migrant women, third sector/NGOs and business sector in the area of volunteering and social integration of migrant women, the increase of female migrants’ capacity for impactful and sustainable socio-cultural participation in host countries, diversity and the possibility of a voluntary offer in business sectors where third country migrant women seek to participate, exercise their social skills or seek employment... Thus, we would like to improve the visibility, social perceptions and societal value of migrant women in European societies, and to create a multi- agency cooperation among business sector, civil society and migrant women in Europe. To reach those objectives, we want to use a specific method: the storytelling, as we said in the first paragraph of the introduction, because itis a communication tool that translates efficiently the message the narrator wants to deliver. Some of the partners have a large experience with this method, and they could test its effectiveness through different projects. Moreover, storytelling is one of the oldest means of communication. Historically, it is first through oral transmission and then in literature, journalism and film that narrative communication techniques have been most widely used. Also, it has been proven that this method makes it easier to get/ convey messages across and has the power to make a very memorable impression. -1-