Narratives Incorporation

Whether organizations are looking for ways to strengthen their Strategy and Programming, Demonstrate Value or Empower Individuals and Communities, incorporating lived-experience stories and narratives is a powerful approach to help reach those goals.

Centering firsthand narratives empowers the people closest to an issue to share and give meaning to their unique knowledge, experiences, perspectives and behaviour. The right stories combine context, emotion, and detail instantly informing quantitative data, clearly demonstrating impact, in addition to helping inspire and define next steps.

Ensure Impact partners with Mission-Based organizations to support various health and social care initiatives that benefit from the integration of lived-experience voices, which may or may not require extensive engagement of various stakeholders. Such projects include: health and social care planning, community development, advocacy, policy development, capacity building, qualitative research and evaluation, process & quality improvement, human-rights monitoring etc.

Our approach to story gathering and sharing is strategic and thoughtful while safeguarding respect and upholding the dignity of lived-experience contributors (LECs) while remaining committed to the following:

• cultural competence & humility

• ethical considerations: informed consent, ethics submissions

• collaborative story gathering: surveys, interviews, focus groups

• trauma-informed interviewing practices

• equity-based facilitation & skilled moderating

• audience specific story sharing formats:  text, video, infographics, storyboards, presentations etc.

• identifying and engaging suitable lived-experience contributors (LECs) by creating a path for those  who want to share their stories

• fostering participatory, safe, engaging and inclusive storytelling & knowledge sharing platforms

• ensuring accountability for authentic story integration and not tokenism