Storytelling

Stories are the gateway to how we achieve many of our social change objectives. I believe strongly that stories are a tool for social advocacy and change. For me, storytelling revolves around how we use stories to check who we are and who we can be or want to be as a people. Telling alternative stories are one of the ways to guarantee that people who have been erased are included in mainstream discussion. It’s important to do this through an original representation of their lived experiences.

 

I believe that stories can shape our social awareness and enable social progression toward an inclusive and respectful one. My belief from this angle is that stories shape our hearts and minds. They expose the traumas that we have experienced and the intersectionality of our trauma as a people. Thus, we can find a common solution as we build a society that is progressive and inclusive. One of the ways we can show the world who we are is through telling authentic stories that show our experiences and desire. For us to truly reinvent ourselves, we must first confront who we were and are now. I believe that stories make a faster connection to daily human lives and experiences and for this, we must tell all stories, from big cities to small towns and from famous to unknown. Our stories must highlight social injustice, human rights violations, and many social discriminations encountered, as well as how we ought to be interacted with as humans. We must tell stories that can shift the status quo, allow us to unlearn and learn while striving to do better as a people. Our stories must be empathetic.

My goal is to see how we tell these stories that speak to a wide range of people regardless of where they find themselves. I desire to see how we use our stories to achieve an inclusive and equal society that guarantees the rights of LGBTIQ persons and women. More importantly, a just and inclusive society.