Field Report: Wood County Strategic Storytelling for Policy

Overview: Yesterday, Suzanne and I collaborated on an evaluation of my "Strategic Storytelling for Policy" session for Wood County CPPW. This is a training that I've only given once before with Ringgold County (via phone) so it's still in the experimental column of our storytelling menu. Our CDC funders gave us positive feedback on this approach during the site visit so I was glad to be able to try it again. This time I did it in 45 minutes with an audience of 13 participants with no PowerPoint or Prezi (!).

Content: Instead of lecture-based, the training introduces 3 concrete tools: Policymaker Assessment, Power Mapping, and Story Inventory (blank ones available here) and teaches through experience. In advance of the training, the coalition coordinator chooses a local policymaking body (school board, city council, county board) as the audience for their storytelling.

1. Policymaker Assessment: The first activity breaks the audience into pairs and assigns them to research details about one of the policymakers as a human being... things like issues they care about or what organizations they belong to (this should feel like a "scavenger hunt"). Having a computer with internet access is very helpful depending on the group's knowledge of their policymakers. You will be surprised, though, how much the group collectively knows without this crutch. Then they report back to the full group two attributes they learned about the policymaker and others can add anything they missed.
2. Power Mapping: The second activity breaks back into pairs and encourages exploration of secondary targets. Based upon our research, which constituencies does our policymaker trust (ex: a youth baseball team, fellow business colleagues, people from her neighborhood). The participants are prompted to draw each group as a bubble surrounding the policymaker at the center. These are channels we can choose to take to access our policymaker.
3. Story Inventory: The third activity prompts the pairs to identify two potential stories/messengers the coalition already has that can utilize one of the channels to our policymaker. Also, they should identify two stories/messengers that the coalition does not have and could recruit. This becomes a roadmap for which stories and messengers to strategically train for your policy campaign.

Successes:

1) Many of the participants liked the activity format and the focus on tools.

• "Mapped a step-by-step process – helps organize thoughts and actions as to what you need to do." - Training Participant

2) I saw the "a-ha" in a few faces during the policymaker assessment activity. Participants tend to be genuinely surprised by how much they collectively know about these people as humans... and how many connections they already have as a coalition. Ringgold had the same reaction.

• "Amazed that we took a list of names of people I didn’t really know and how much I knew about them." - Training Participant

3) The time between intake and training was short. On Tuesday, Kristie identified the need on the phone and invited me up. Wednesday was the coalition meeting. This was fun to be able to react quickly, was great relationship building, and avoided Kristie needing to plan another whole training.

4) We tried to do an evaluation focus group via video chat, which was pretty fun and allowed us to include evaluation on short notice without Suzanne needing to travel. She would have preferred in person, but didn't mind it - especially because we had access to wireless internet connection (which worked!). The coalition members who knew Suzanne said it was a real treat to be able to interact with her.

Challenges:

1) The coalition chose to put me last on the agenda, so the timing with Suzanne was not ideal. The evaluation focus group at the end was a little rushed and we didn't do a baseline (pre) evaluation with the group. The lesson here was to build the evaluation into the agenda as a "learning layer" and not add it onto the end of the training, where it can get compromised.

2) It continues to be clear that I need to leave the room during the evaluation... not sure why I haven't learned that yet!

3) No WCH other team member was interested and available in observing this time to build capacity across our team, assuming this is a training we want to continue. Also, the activity format of the training made it impossible for Suzanne to meaningfully observe during the training.

Next Steps:

Kristie will be using the story inventory to decide who to strategically invite to our upcoming (TBD) full day storytelling session. This should increase the number of participants who use their story after the training since we've identified a specific purpose, and hopefully boost the coalition's impact on policymakers... but that's news for the next Field Report!