Storytelling

The Storytelling Method developed by GlobalGiving

GlobalGiving has a network of thousands of organizations. We reach out to them and ask each one to recruit a dozen young people in a town where they work. They meet with these people, train them on being good listeners, give them sheets of paper, and send them forth to interview people in the community. Each scribe (young person) interviews 10-20 people in a month, 2 stories each with an overall target of 200 stories (10 people X 10 interviewees X 2 stories each). At the end of the month these papers are collected, photographed by smart phone, and emailed to a central site that transcribes them. Every story appears online.

 

Scribes ask storytellers to talk about one time when a person or organization tried to help someone or do something in the community, and what happened? 

 

The samples are not random and not representative, but over time we learn which scribes do a better job and retain them, and retrain others. And the 200 stories per organization twice a year add up to tens of thousands of stories in a shared pool of knowledge that would otherwise have not existed. We then use computation to parse these stories into digestible groups relevant to each organization, and plan to set up a regular digest of these stories for each organization.

Below you’ll find links to tools and tutorials on how to use them. Many of these tools live on djotjog.com.

 

Lastly, there is one additional rule that makes benchmarking possible. No more than 50% of the stories can be about any one organization (especially the organization that is collecting the stories). That’s why we ask each person for 2 stories; one can be about the organization but the other must be about anyone else, even an individual that changed the community.

Where to start

• Storytelling evaluations Part 1: Analyzing existing data
• Storytelling evaluations Part 2: Build your own survey in 5 minutes
• Download the Real Book for story-based evaluations

Developing the Storytelling Method

• Read about our 2010 pilot in Kenya
• People & paper: Community level story sharing and analysis
  • The Story Theme Game
  • Clustering Story actions with Magoso staff
  • Kibera pre-meeting April 2012
  • Kibera follow-up April 2012
  • Mathare meeting April 2012
  • Kisumu community feedback focuses on conceptual evaluation
  • Kakmega: Our first Community Feedback Session

• Case Studies
  • Example of analysis of a social problem for an ongoing project (Mrembo)
    • Context: Girls get straight talk about sex from Mrembo project
    • Comparing two rape prevention programs
    • Mapping stories about rape across East Africa
  • Playpumps and broken feedback loops
  • Gichuki Francis of TYSA demonstrates story-driven development
  • Why do they run away? Analyzing stories about street children
  • Stories about Water and SWIM
  • Storytelling the East African Drought & Famine
  • Empowering Youth in Dadaab Refugee Camp
  • Community Stories about Kitovu Mobile
  • Analyzing Stories about Street Children
  • Kenya Post Election Violence Stories – 2012 edition
• Behavioral Economics and Psychology of the storytelling method
  • I don’t trust you, but…
  • A tale of two perspectives(Comparing Story and Development Lexicons)
• Data Processing
  • Transcribing thousands of stories
  • Tracking flow in storytelling
  • How to geomap story locations across East Africa
  • XKCD gridplotting: Getting a reality check on taxes and perspective

• SMS tool: Give a story to get a similar story
• From survey questions to prescriptive answers
• Real NGO Attribution & Complexities in Automating It
• Survey feebleness
• Part I: Is international development complex? (meta analysis of 40,000 community stories)
• Part II: Which kinds of community efforts are more complex than others?
• Part II-A: More examples of word-trees
• Part III: Scribes give feedback on the storytelling project
• Using BigML to dissect trends in 43,388 stories
• New Tool: Instant quantitative assessment of qualitative data

Algorithm to Analyze the Aid Lexicon

• Dejargonifying NGOs and International Development
• A tale of two perspectives
• Crowdsourcing definitions in international development
• Visual-aid-for-the-story-based-program-evaluation-method

Story Analysis Algorithms

• The “interesting story” filter (Story redundancy)
• Mapping the transition from qualitative to quantitative (Wordtree maps)
• Statistical grounding for qualitative story sets (externally corrected log-ratios of word frequency)
• Real NGO attribution and the complexities in automating it
• h-index for measuring individual impact in international development
• Visualizing Stories as Data in Network Maps (many examples)
  • I: Story data visualized
  • II:  More examples of word-trees
  • III: Visual budget comparison of Paul Ryan vs OMB and Obamacare
  • IV: Comparing HIV/AIDS organizations and stories
  • V: Visual aid for the story-based program evaluation method
  • VI: Visual Maps of Word Associations in Story Sets
• The automatic self-bias detector
• Dictionary filtering of narratives: How fuzzy a concept is “human rights”?
• Demonstrating the power of the 2-story rule
• SMS contact as an Indicator of Community Trust
• Story Diversity Visualized

Community Network Maps

• Mapping a network of Youth Organizations in Kampala
• Interactive NGO Community Maps in Western Kenya
• Community NGO maps in Kenya, Uganda

Agile, Iterative Design, and Lean Startup

• GlobalGiving :- Agile approach to the Japan Earthquake Disaster, and international development
• Map of our iterative design evolution: Simplicity beyond complexity
• A true picture of the iteration and innovation within the storytelling method
• More complexity posts

Other related coolness

• Visually Clear Wealth Inequality

• Can IBM’s Watson reveal hidden patterns in International Development?

• Fix feedback in philanthropy – make evaluations public

• Map Kibera, GlobalGiving storytellers, and SMS updates.

• What good is an SMS switchboard for Kenyans and their local NGOs?

• Fighting poverty – more experiments, big push, social fabric?

• Analyzing complexity in 4 steps

• Understanding humanity through emotional connections – Jonathan Harris

• Peer Review: works in spite of scientists

• Remittance Economy Statistics for Africa

• Exploring Mars is the only way to feed the poor