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Climate
​Storytellers

A program that builds the capacity of the capacity builders...
​to find, make, edit and share their most powerful stories addressing climate change.


Climate Storytellers

Let's go on a storytelling journey together, with Climate Storytellers!

Capacity-building is critical to facing the many complex challenges of climate change. The Paris Committee on Capacity-Building (PCCB) Network exists to support climate-related capacity-building, particularly for emerging economies. But capacity-building can sometimes feel like an abstract concept, covering many diverse activities and groups.

Storytelling is a powerful tool to create awareness of capacity building activities, engage communities and spark action. Are you ready to unlock your capacity building story?

Climate Storytellers is a four-part program that builds your capacity to find, make, edit and share your most powerful stories of the way you and your communities are addressing climate change.

It's up to you whether you attend one session, some sessions or all four!

Attending all four sessions will take you on a journey from building your story, by reflecting on and exploring the impact that your work has, through to finding the most impactful stories you have to tell, to making your own stories using smartphones and affordable equipment, and collating and sharing your stories with opportunities to amplify your stories and films across the network.

This program is a collaboration between CLEAR Environmental and Digital Storytellers.


At the end of the program, you will have…

  • Ideas and draft outlines of the most powerful stories you can be telling to engage communities, stakeholders and spark action,
  • Tools and frameworks to craft, produce, edit and share more digital content going forward
  • Practical techniques for capturing interviews, pieces to camera and other footage with smartphones, tablets or cameras
  • Stories crafted from start to finish, in your chosen formats, whether written, visual or digital, with feedback and input from peers and experts
  • Opportunities to share your story through through campaigns within the network and beyond
  • Connection and friendships with other PCCB Network members
  • Access to a community of practice, to continue their storytelling journey

Register

Program outline

SESSION 1 - BUILD Your Story - Facilitated by CLEAR Environmental

  • Thursday, 19th August (90-minute session on Zoom)
    • 6:00am (Pacific Standard Time)  
    • 9:00am (Eastern Standard Time)  
    • 2:00pm (West Africa Standard Time/British Summer Time)   
    • 11:00pm (Australian Eastern Standard Time)

One aspect of climate storytelling that can be highlighted and lifted is that of capacity builders themselves, those working in areas of education, training, and public awareness. In Session 1, you'll brainstorm and reflect on your personal and/or organization’s climate action efforts. Writing groups will support each other on answering the question: How are you promoting and facilitating capacity to engage in climate action? In answering this question, we’ll also support you in thinking about the different formats in which you can tell your story (textual, photographic, audiovisual, etc).


SESSION 2 - FIND Your Story - Facilitated by Digital Storytellers

  • Thursday, 26th August (90-minute session on Zoom)  
    • 6:00am (Pacific Standard Time)  
    • 9:00am (Eastern Standard Time)  
    • 2:00pm (West Africa Standard Time/British Summer Time)   
    • 11:00pm (Australian Eastern Standard Time)

In this practical workshop, participants will brainstorm and distill their ideas using the Story Canvas - a tool, based on the popular Business Model Canvas, which helps in thinking strategically and creatively about engaging audiences through compelling stories, whether for blog posts, videos, presentations or beyond.


SESSION 3 - MAKE Your Story - Facilitated by Digital Storytellers

  • Thursday, 2nd September (90-minute session on Zoom)  
    • 6:00am (Pacific Standard Time)  
    • 9:00am (Eastern Standard Time)  
    • 2:00pm (West Africa Standard Time/British Summer Time)   
    • 11:00pm (Australian Eastern Standard Time)

In this 90-minute workshop participants will learn the skills to create digital content, including videos and imagery, without the need for expensive equipment or a big budget. This is a VERY hands on workshop where participants will use smartphones, tablets and more to practice filmmaking and photography.
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SESSION 4 - COMMUNICATE Your Story - Facilitated by CLEAR Environmental

  • Thursday, 9th September (90-minute session on Zoom)  
    • 6:00am (Pacific Standard Time)  
    • 9:00am (Eastern Standard Time)  
    • 2:00pm (West Africa Standard Time/British Summer Time)   
    • 11:00pm (Australian Eastern Standard Time)

After documenting your story visually with Digital Storytellers, we invite you to return for a final workshop on writing well-crafted communication tools or ‘vignettes’ that allow you to share your work on capacity building in areas of education, training, and public awareness in your own voice with diverse audiences in all parts of society. In this second workshop of our series, we will collectively present and share communication tools and explore how to organize their distribution on a webpage hosted in collaboration with the PCCB network to help the public mobilize for climate action. Along with publishing your multimedia vignette, which may include the video piece created in collaboration with Digital Storytellers, we will delve into future possibilities of collaboratively writing policy related to your climate empowerment work!


After the program:

  • Materials and resources for you to dive further into the process of how to EDIT & SHARE digital stories.
  • As an exciting incentive, the best 3 stories coming out of the workshops will be edited by the team at Digital Storytellers and shared with the PCCB Network!

Let’s change the world together, using the power of storytelling.

More information about the curriculum

FIND your impact story


Before we start making stories, let's develop a plan

In this 90-minute workshop, participants will brainstorm and distill their ideas using the Story Canvas’ - a tool, based on the popular Business Model Canvas, which helps in thinking strategically and creatively about engaging audiences through compelling stories.

This workshop will cover:

●  Developing a compelling story - purpose, key messages, people and places, style and tone, call to action, outcomes.
​ ●  Audience identification and analysis
​ ● Story Structures - hook, jab, beyond the 'Hero's Journey', the Public Narrative and more  

MAKE your impact story

Lights, Camera... ACTION!

In this 90-minute workshop participants will learn the skills to produce powerful content, without the need for expensive equipment or a big budget. This is a VERY hands on workshop where participants will use smartphones, tablets and more to film interviews and cutaways.
​ This workshop will cover:

●  The basics of smartphone filmmaking
​ ●  How to capture interviews and pieces to camera
​ ●  How to 'show' and not just 'tell' your story, through b-roll, cutaways and other dynamic footage.

●  Story planning and the production grid

EDIT your impact story


Simple editing for powerful stories
​

Participants will access resources which demystify the ‘black box’ of post-production and help participants bring their footage together into a short, sharp and shareable piece. Also available as a facilitated workshop.

SHARE your impact story

Scaling your story to the world

Participants will access resources to help them identify the individuals, organisations and communities they need to engage to get your story out into the world and create impact. It will equip them with the tools and strategies to connect your stories with their audience in the online and offline world, and help them build a community behind your cause. Also available as a facilitated workshop.

Our Work,

I have no doubt that the team at DS put their heart and soul into every project to ensure that only the highest quality products carry the Digital Storytellers name and brand.”
​-Shirley Chowdhary, CEO, GO Foundation

Case Study:

UNDP Somali Storytellers Bootcamp & Online Mentoring

Individual stories are powerful tools for shifting the minds, hearts and actions of audiences. But when they form part of a greater narrative of change, they can help drive movements of systemic societal change.   

This was the ethos behind the Somali Storytellers bootcamp, which we ran in partnership with UNDP Somalia Accelerator Lab. The bootcamp launched Somalia’s first digital storytelling collective, Somali Storytellers, to write a new story for the future of Somalia by amplifying the stories of locally-driven solutions to development challenges. 

Over an intensive week, 20 participants from across Somalia participated in a week of learning how to  FIND, MAKE, EDIT & SHARE impactful video stories. Participants also dove deep into reflecting on their own personal and community narratives, using creative drama exercises and through group ‘Campfire’ story sessions. This intensive week was followed by a number of online mentorship sessions, through live webinars and a custom-designed Somali Storytellers online training portal. 

Since the program, the Somali Storytellers have continued training with Digital Storytellers through our 'Train the Trainer' program, and used these skills to run their own training programs for new generations of Somali Storytellers.

See more of the films and learn more about the project here.

The facilitators

CLEAR Environmental - Deb Morrison & Chris Cameron

At CLEAR Environmental, Chris and Deb work with and for communities in partnership with a wide variety of organizations to further work in climate learning for collective empowerment, action, and resilience. Through learning session such as Implementing Action for Climate Empowerment (ACE) to Accelerate Climate Action - given as part of a RINGO side event of the UNFCCC’s Climate Dialogues in 2020, we engage in organizational change that leads to just climate actions and fosters global sustainability. Our work with organizations and governments on participatory based design processes leverage the values, activities, and wisdom of a given community, such as the collaborative effort An ACE National Strategic Planning Framework for the United States, to ensure that diverse perspectives and experiences within all of society are engaged. We also engage in collaborations to create tailored briefing documents such as the Justice and Action for Climate Empowerment (ACE): Guidance for Equitable Capacity-Building and Justice-Centered Implementation for fostering awareness of the intersectional nature of justice issues within the capacity building work of those involved in UNFCCC efforts. 

Natasha Akib

Director, Co-Creator, Stories for Impact

Natasha is a Director and Co-Creator of Digital Storytellers, where she created the popular Stories For Impact capacity building programs. For the past seven years Natasha has focused her energy on working with communities and grassroots organisations to empower them to share their own stories and have the voices heard. She is also a producer, videographer and editor at Digital Storytellers.

Natasha's previous experience includes her role as the Community Builder at StartSomeGood - the crowdfunding platform for social and environmental projects and as a Marketing Adviser at Bhutan Observer - one of the first non-government newspapers in Bhutan. She also worked at Vibewire, a Sydney based NFP launchpad for young people, becoming Head Editor and Board Member and was the Global Partnerships Coordinator a the 2014 Social Change Film Festival in New Orleans.

In 2018 Natasha was inducted into the Edmund Hilary Fellowship in Aotearoa New Zealand. She holds a Bachelor of Media and Communications from Macquarie University and is also graduate of KAOSPILOT - The Art & Craft of Designing & Facilitating Learning Spaces

  • Relevant Stories for Impact Project Experience 
    • Lead Workshop Facilitator & Project Manager, UNDP Somali: Somali Storytellers Digital Storytelling Bootcamp & 'Train the Trainer' Program, 2019-2021
    • Lead Facilitator & Project Manager Queensland Social Enterprise Council Online Bootcamp, 2020
    • Lead Workshop Facilitator & Project Manager, Woollahra Municipality Council Digital Storytelling 2-Day workshop, 2019
    • Workshop Facilitator, Central Coast Council Waterways Digital Storytelling Program 2019
    • Lead Workshop Facilitator, Facebook Australia/New Zealand Storytelling Workshop, 2019
    • Lead Workshop Facilitator, Central Land Council – Rangers on Country Digital Storytelling Workshop, 2018


Daniela Benavides

Coordinator, Stories for Impact

Daniela co-pilots Stories For Impact, with a focus on environmental communications for behaviour change and a passion for bridging the gap between sustainability and mainstream audiences. As a conservation scientist and filmmaker she recognises the power conservationists, non-profits, academia and government can unlock with storytelling to captivate wider audiences and drive their missions.
​
​As Regional Chair, Oceania for the IUCN Commission of Education & Communication and Chair of ICUN's #NatureForAll program, Dani mobilises people all over the planet to support action for conservation, leveraging the power of storytelling and effective communication for community building.

Daniela has a Film and Media degree from International Film School Sydney, a partial Masters in Environmental Communications from Duke University and a Conservation & Evolutionary Biology degrees from the University of Colorado at Boulder.


  • Relevant Stories for Impact Project Experience 
    • Workshop Facilitator, Department of Planning Industry & Environment - NSW Government, Science Division Storytelling Program
    • Lead Facilitator & Project Manager, Social Enterprise Network of Victoria , Online Bootcamp, 2020
    • Lead Facilitator & Project Manager, Great Barrier Reef Foundation , Online Bootcamp, 2020
    • Workshop Facilitator, Woollahra Municipality Council Digital Storytelling 2-Day workshop, 2019
    • Lead Workshop Facilitator, Central Coast Council Waterways Digital Storytelling Program 2019


FAQs

What equipment do participants need?

  • A smartphone or tablet with a camera and (at least) 1 GB of free space 
  • Headphones


The Story Canvas


The Story Canvas is a methodology we have developed in-house, based on the popular Business Model Canvas. It provides a lens for telling stories that resonate with audiences and build into successful campaigns. Today, it is used by changemakers around the world to generate strategy for impact storytelling. We will use the story canvas to confirm a strategic approach to your story. +

You are the Climate Storytellers.

We look forward to telling some great stories together!

Natasha Akib, [email protected]