Warsaw Fellowship 2016

Do I own my story only for myself? Do I bare responsibility to share?

Judyta Nędza, 2016 Ideas Incubator Fellow, Poland

Two days session on Introducing to Community Organizing was with its first part not much as I expected that. Thinking about the training on how to raise the public awareness and organize people around the problem, I was rather imagining learning from the experience of successful social campaigns, training on traditional and social media tools, which came after, but before that, my mind was exercised in one of the most challenging ways.

I have always thought that having own story in the ideas, actions, for which one advocates, is an asset, helping to better realize and address the issue. Nothing gives better understanding of the problem than direct involvement in it. But is that necessary? Does it always have to be an own experience behind the idea?   Maybe, I still do not know, or rather I am not sure. I have this struggle inside, which is connected with the philosophical thought of Immanuel Kant or John Stuart Mill, that self-interest is intrinsically non moral. It is independent on others` interest and does not matter how courageous and others-oriented it is, still it is motivated by self-centrism. The struggle is real, because during the session on “Owning Your Story”, which was the part of the workshop, I have found my own, in the future action plan I am planning to manage. This story and interest is quite personal, however most of the stories shared during the session were like this.

And here comes the next concern which has remained in my mind for a long time after the workshops. Do we have the story behind just for ourselves to bear in mind to stay on track pursuing the aim or do we have the responsibility to share? Will it empower anybody? Will it help? I guess, we will not know, until we reveal it, but this part seems the most difficult. There is always this fear if the experience is powerful and impactful enough to share, or sometimes if the narrative given to it can make a change. I would be very far advocating for using personal experience as tool in empowering in social campaign, until the “story holder” is ready to share and feel comfortable and confident with his/her emotional attitude towards it. But what if there is a temptation to share even traumatic experience in a sake of saying to others: “I went through that and now I am stronger”, or “The problem is not that minor as it seems, it affected me”. There is a huge burden on the person having own story to use it right and if sharing, using that in the very right moment. 

Judyta Nędza