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By Meg A. Warren, Ph.D., and Annie Crookes, Ph.D.
Across the world, NGOs are tackling some of the most challenging and complex problems. Many situated in vastly different cultural contexts are nevertheless addressing similar issues (e.g., gender inequity, poverty, climate crisis), facing similar barriers (e.g., inadequate infrastructure, resistance), and struggling under similar resource constraints. Yet they feel isolated. They want to scale up, reignite creativity, and find connection and support. Yet, despite similar missions and goals, collaboration can feel hard. What if the solution isn’t another conference or toolkit, but a different kind of conversation?
This is the question we found ourselves asking recently. As a cultural psychologist who studies allyship, particularly men as allies for gender equity, I (Warren) try to immerse myself in various cultural environments to learn what allyship looks like within their contexts. During one exploration, Crookes (my co-author of this article) and I (Warren) interviewed Nisha Khan, the CEO of Building Innate Resilience Through Hearts in Fiji.
I found myself sharing stories from the grassroots from my recent visit to the NGO CfK Africa in Kenya, just as much as I was gathering stories about Fiji from Khan. What was supposed to be a one-hour interview extended to three. Instead of the formal interview I envisioned in her office, we ended up with a lively gathering, as staff members pulled up chairs and offered us tea and cakes.
At one point, Crookes suggested, “What if we—Khan, Crookes, and I—connected with Siama Yusuf, the senior program officer at CfK Africa in Kenya, and exchanged stories directly with each other?”
Sharing Grassroots Stories to Ignite Creativity
Research shows that sharing stories and experiences enables people to construct meaning together, enhance existing skills and knowledge, and strengthen social connections. Studies also find that sharing stories can spark creative insight and innovation. Particularly, stories from the grassroots that are rich, detailed, and fine-grained.
While Khan and Yusuf were keen to meet (virtually) and talk, we knew that they were two very different people working in vastly different contexts, and so we needed a strong setup. We also presumed that past online experiences would influence this new interaction, and all of us could default to “presenting” and “promoting” rather than deep sharing, listening, and reflection.
To shake things up, we structured the conversation around three central aims: story sharing, finding connections, and overcoming challenges together. We focused on the following themes:
1. Share favorite stories of change from the grassroots, in the work with individuals, families, or communities.
2. Identify and reflect upon people and groups who are or have the potential to be cultural levers of change: those who may not be obvious community leaders but can drive change from the back seat.
3. Find connections and reflect on the similarities across contexts.
4. Discuss challenges to engaging men as allies in meaningful (daily life) change.
5. Messages to funding partners and program stakeholders, as grassroots experts in close touch with on-the-ground issues.
Benefits of Story Exchanges
By emphasizing deep and vulnerable sharing and listening to stories, it was possible to see similarities and bridge the gap between the two senior officers who were operating at different program levels, differently sized organizations, and in dramatically different cultural contexts. Rather than allowing differences to drive them apart or see each other’s experiences as irrelevant to their own situations, the exchange of stories inspired curiosity about how each was overcoming challenges with ingenuity and micro-adaptations, and they saw common themes underlying superficial differences.
And they drew rich and compelling insights for the next big step in advancing men’s allyship for gender equity. For instance, both recognized that existing rhetorics can chip away at the dignity and respect of “perpetrators,” and that it was important not to allow interventions to dehumanize them.
Additionally, while women’s empowerment work has created important change, there hasn’t been enough conversation for men’s new and adapted roles, and men’s perceptions of disempowerment could trigger violence as a way to snatch back power and value again. They also agreed that when men saw their new roles and ways of being men as meaningful, men (particularly those with high status) talked to other men, and shared their own successes and achievements. Particularly when men experienced benefits as allies, such as improved family relationships and better financial stability, they organically championed gender equity.
Closing Insights
For nascent and dynamic fields of research and practice, such as allyship, the ingenuity of grassroots organizations gives rise to naturally occurring pilots and preliminary evidence, based on which more formal programs can be built. This is critical when the body of evidence is rapidly developing and changing, and new insights are informing practice. Here, exchanging stories can be powerful in curating observations, co-creating understanding, openly (and with vulnerability) exploring how challenges can be overcome, and drawing insights for developing and adapting programs at the grassroots.
Annie Crookes, Ph.D., is Senior Lecturer in Psychology at the University of South Pacific, based in Suva, Fiji. She has been coordinating the psychology programs alongside supporting national and grassroots services in mental health in Fiji for the past 6 years.
