How can applied storytelling help young activists in Colombia’s strategic ecosystems make a stronger impact on deliberative contexts?
Applied Storytelling is my attempt to facilitate strategic communication skills for young activists in Colombia’s rural and strategic ecosystems. These young people are becoming key political actors, yet they still face poverty, violence, weak infrastructure, and communication programs that don’t speak their language or reality.
Most international training models -debate formats, Toastmasters, UN simulations- don’t reach them or simply don’t fit. My project explores an evidence-based, culturally respectful alternative that supports collaboration, strengthens local voices, and can be sustained without outside facilitators. It’s about designing something rooted in non-urban Colombia, without imposing foreign narrative frameworks, so young people can build trust in deliberative oral processes
This blog is structured into four cycles. Each cycle recounts the research process of “Applied Storytelling”, which is typically divided into the phases of gathering information, planning, intervening, and reflecting.
- Cycle 0 covers the first three units. Here, I was exploring and developing a research question. This section is primarily reflective and anecdotal.
- Cycle 1 begins with a research question related with climate change and rhetoric and details the first intervention prototype. I call this cycle “Applied Rhetoric”.
- Cycle 2 offers greater clarity on applied storytelling and primarily focuses on the analysis of the intervention.
- Cycle 3 does not include an intervention as it represents my current stage: I am gathering information and interviewing experts to refine the intervention from the previous cycle.