How We Are Different
Stories Move Mountains begins by being together with community members. We engage in conversation and inquiry, so people can see what knowledge, skills, and resources they already have; what skills they most want to learn; what they most desire for themselves and their communities; what’s blocking their way that they’ve internalized from the larger sociocultural context; and what can move them forward to where they and their communities most want to go.
This process is unique in each community and each context. In this sense it’s entirely unlike conventional approaches to leadership and community work, which assume a widely applicable set of truths or norms. At the same time, this process honors multiple approaches and contexts.
In the process, community members reclaim forgotten or unacknowledged truths of leading practices and being in community; co-construct new possibilities; and discover or rediscover hope, which itself opens up more alternatives and possibilities for real-world action.
“Narrative approaches assume that people have many skills, competencies, beliefs, values, commitments, and abilities that will assist them to reduce the influence of problems in their lives….Narrative approaches involve ways of understanding the stories of people’s lives, and ways of re-authoring these stories….It is a way of working that is interested in history, the broader context that is affecting people’s lives, and the ethics or politics of this work.”