We are a youth-led initiative that encourages storytelling as a means to empower, educate, and hone empathy.
Our goal is to be able to gain enough volunteers to visit Richmond high schools and share their personal stories of healing, of their culture, of learning, and more. Not only is this a great way to learn, but also a great way to foster a sense of community.
“Students are typically drawn in by personal stories because they are more accessible and relatable in comparison to the type of information they are used to receiving from textbooks. Because textbooks are often written in the third person, they may create the impression of being far removed from students’ lives and may consequently disengage students” (Cortes, p22).
Do you ever try to study alone and then realize just how much more you learn when you study with others? Do you ever have a good conversation in which you feel that you’ve learned more than any article could share?
I realized that individualistic, mono-faceted approaches weren’t helpful for someone like me who was already very self-reliant. True healing and learning came when I shifted toward a community-focused and collective learning approach.
I often felt lost. I felt like I wasn’t retaining information or studying as efficiently as other teens, or generally that I’m just never good enough at anything… other than caring “too much.” Luckily for me, I realized that I needed to harness that care, rather than it becoming a trait that would weigh me down. So, I would volunteer, I would go out of my comfort zone to find those communities that like me- cared “too much.” Those communities allowed for storytelling and allowed for us to learn from and with one another.
It was not a textbook that told me where I’d find my passions, how I’d feel for humanity, or how I could be a good person. It wasn’t a textbook or being completely out of touch with vulnerability that took me out of a spiral I spent years trying to get out of.
This is why I realized more youth should have access to storytelling and we should encourage community based healing and learning.
Based in so-called “Richmond,” the traditional, ancestral, and unceded lands of the Coast Salish Peoples, specifically the Musqueam, Kwantlen, and Tsawwassen nations. It is so important that we seek genuine ways to combat colonization and focus on reconciliation. The efforts come from within, so everytime you read or say a land acknowledgement, really check within yourself and ask “what are my intentions in doing this?” I like to make my land acknowledgements a bit different each time as a way to reflect as a settler and see what speaks to me in the moment.
In an article published in The Arbutus Review (2020), Friskie states,“[t]he strength of oral storytelling for Indigenous Nations dates back thousands of years, and the people who hold those stories have overcome many barriers, such as the assimilation tactics of colonization that sought to destroy them” (p20). I am grateful to have been able to meet the wonderful person who wrote that, and believe that we need to amplify indigenous voices and storytelling.