The Zenith Society for Socio-Legal Empowerment has been supported by aikyam fellows since 2023 to develop and manage its website. Taking forward this strong association, two members from Zenith: Swapnil & Adithi attended the aikyam Tools for Storytelling residency, eager to meet their collaborators in person and learn the tools of digital storytelling.
aikyam space is cozy and well-equipped, ensuring an immersive experience, free from distractions. With facilities for accommodation and meals, participants had ample time to focus on learning while keeping up with their regular work.
Storytelling residency with participants from Zenith Society, Eastern Himalaya Foundation & Captains Social Foundation
Hands-On Learning for Impactful Communication
The residency emphasized a hands-on approach, enabling participants to interact, collaborate, and refine their storytelling and digital communication skills. The sessions structured our self-taught storytelling knowledge, focusing on four key stages: discoverability, visibility, engagement, and impact. We also engaged in exercises to identify and connect with our audience based on their core needs and preferred communication methods.
An insightful takeaway was understanding the balance between power and impact in decision-making. It was striking to see that beneficiaries often have low decision-making power but are highly impacted by decisions, reinforcing a bottom-up approach in framing narratives.
Megha
Find out more about and sign up for the residency
Tools and Techniques for Stronger Digital Presence
aikyam fellows encouraged the participants to take ownership of their content and platforms. This was facilitated through training in Ghost, an open-source website-building platform. We also had an engaging Q&A on Plausible Analytics, a privacy-friendly tool for tracking website metrics.
Additionally, we explored tools and resources like Hemingway Editor to enhance content readability, BookStack for documentation, Tally Forms for data collection, and PATTIC, a repository of statutory and regulatory updates for the non-profit sector.
Building Sustainable Writing Habits
A key learning was habit stacking, a technique to ensure consistent writing and documentation of grassroots work. The workshop equipped us with transferable skills to implement within our teams, fostering structured, effective storytelling for wider impact.
We left the residency with not just new knowledge, but a renewed sense of purpose in how we communicate and amplify our work. aikyam’s thoughtful and interactive approach made this workshop a truly enriching experience.
