Local Story

The work done with Hope for Haiti (HFH) was exhaustive, spanning over six months and multiple trips to Aux Cayes, the capital of the southern region of . Really, you could say the work started 8 years ago, when I interned with them during graduate school! HFH has kept their mission simple: “Joyful children; healthy families; thriving communities; and the resources to make it so.” What I love about them, and what keeps me coming back to work with them in different ways, is their focus: just southern Haiti, in one department (Cayes). This geographic focus not only helps them deliver strong programs (hard to do when you’re trying to cover more ground), it allows them to develop deeper relationships with the people they work with; and it makes actually monitoring and evaluating their work that much easier, which matters to donors.

In honor of the 10-year anniversary of the devastating Haitian earthquake, HFH is raising $10 million dollars to benefit over 300,000 Haitians. Learn more on their website. As always, their work is humbling in its enormous impact, and we’re proud to help them tell stories about the amazing work they do.

This first video we’re showcasing originally started as an “about education” piece, but we wanted to tell a more interesting story. We met Joelie and her younger sister in St. Laurent. They had moved to the south following the earthquake and the destruction of nearly everything. Now they’re getting ready to graduate, full of hope, with a solid education that can take them just about anywhere they want to go!

On the eve of Local Story’s fourth anniversary, I want to reflect on some of the amazing partnerships we’ve had so far, and use this platform to help promote the awe-inspiring work they do every day.

The first partner Local Story ever worked with is a small charity run out of England and Thailand called The Karen Hilltribes Trust (KHT). KHT works in Northwest Thailand, along the Thai-Myanmar border in a region called Mae Hong Son. While there are a plethora of organizations working with Karen refugees, very few organizations are devoted to the Karen people who have settled in communities, often generations ago. These Karen live in a quasi-legal state; the Thai authorities have allowed Karen communities to exist and sometimes grow, but they don’t have access to the same social services the Thai government provides to Thai citizens.

I can still remember where I was when I got the phone call from KHT telling me that they wanted to move forward with telling stories of the Karen people. For a first-time small business owner, getting my first client was an affirmation not only of my hard work, but of my values: that storytelling was something worth investing in, even for small organizations such as KHT where every penny has to be stretched. An interesting take-away from that first assignment was that the “least planned” story, a story about the faith and day-to-day practices of the Karen people, ended up being everyone’s favorite.

I had to reread our contract to remember how it came to fruition: “A video focusing on a specific story within the KHT, with the co-creation team being led through the entire storytelling process. (5-10 minutes in length)” I had forgotten that we’d used a co-creation process for that story, but rereading the language and then rewatching the video, it makes sense.

The co-creation process is where stories are brainstormed with a variety of stakeholders, including filmmakers and non-profit staff, to be sure, but also the people whose stories we’re telling. Of course it ended up being everyone’s favorite story—it was their idea, not mine! The video doesn’t have a traditional story arc, nor does it try to. Instead, Local Story and KHT let the stories of the Karen people form the structure of the story, confident that was enough to capture people’s interest.

We don’t use the co-creation process often enough, and I personally don’t highlight the value the process brings as much as I should. When I’m in “pitching client” mode it can be counter-intuitive to slow the process down a bit, particularly when time and money are at a premium. But that’s why we’re doing this retrospective, right? To learn from what’s worked in the past, and grow from that. There’s more to come in the weeks ahead, so stay tuned and please share this post on Facebook if it’s enjoyable--it really helps us reach more people!

In honor of our upcoming four year anniversary, we're taking a look back at our past clients, starting with..... USAID - US Agency for International Development! Now, USAID definitely does not need our help promoting itself, but the local partners we worked with in Cambodia (The Don Bosco school) and Vietnam (Vien Pham at VietHealth) as well as USAID/Indonesia, for the awesome work they're doing on inclusive education. VietHealth, where most of the physical therapy work on the video takes place, was particularly helpful in showing us how inclusive education can take place just about anywhere there are trained professionals who care deeply about improving the lives of children.

It can be hard to watch old stories we've told and not be obsessed with what we would do differently, how we would "make it better", etc. I started Local Story with idea of telling other people's stories, rather than my own, and it can be hard in the era of Influencers to shake off the fear of self-aggrandizement. So rather than try and promote ourselves over our anniversary month, we're going to promote our partners, who do the hard work every day. Each week we'll profile a different partner we've worked with, in some cases providing updates on what they're up to now!

If you know of a good non-profit working on inclusive education, leave us a note in the box below!

Gotta use what ya got.