Hello, I'm Afsal Mohammed, from Captains Social Foundation – a youth-led non-profit volunteering organisation with the objective of building future leaders through volunteering. We design volunteering opportunities for young people to enhance their 21st-century skills and contribute to addressing the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
For the past three years, we have been actively volunteering in our communities, engaging over 10,000 volunteers in 2.5 lakh hours of volunteering. Despite our efforts, we have often failed to document our journey and share the stories of our impact. As we approached our third anniversary this year, I started thinking about better ways to brand our organisation and inspire people through our impact stories.
While searching for a way to do this more effectively, I came across the Tools for Storytelling Residency Program by aikyam fellows. After seeing the incredible stories shared by previous participants, I decided to apply. From the very first online meeting, I felt welcomed by the community. It was inclusive, supportive, and this feeling only grew stronger when I physically visited their workspace.
Seeing the workspace was amazing — it felt like a dream place where I could work and boost productivity. The sessions by Sumi and Megha were truly insightful and engaging. Throughout the sessions, I kept thinking of new ideas to improve our storytelling and make our work more visible to the world.
The workshop sessions were fully hands-on and engaging
Although I already had a basic understanding of designing websites, the sessions helped me revisit those skills and taught me how to pass on that knowledge to my volunteers. It also guided me on how to enhance our website effectively.
I absolutely loved the Ghost platform. It is simple to use and allows easy updates — exactly what I was looking for. The most exciting part was learning how to categorise our blog by initiatives to showcase our impact and to use tags to organise content. Inspired by this, I restructured our impact-sharing process and started creating blogs for all our activities to effectively highlight our achievements.
After the workshop, I completed our website within a month. I would especially like to thank Jinso from aikyam fellows for all the technical support and guidance. I'm truly grateful to the aikyam team for organising such an impactful workshop that helped me re-imagine how we tell our story and publish it effectively.
Megha
I believe workshops like this will be incredibly helpful for new organisations, enabling them to achieve better visibility and showcase their impact in a structured and inspiring way. Thank you, aikyam, for this amazing opportunity!
