A recent survey of Top Five Fears places public speaking alongside “identity theft” and “mass shootings.” In the 1980s, it completed with “nuclear destruction.” In the 1970s, “shark attack.
It’s not by story alone that successful advocates urge others to take action. Advocating with our personal stories takes a specific kind of preparation. It requires practice with elements of persuasio...
Be an advocate for the people and causes important to you, using the most powerful tool only you have—your personal stories.
The enormity of problems like hunger and social injustice can certainly motivate us to act. We can be convinced logically of the need for intervention and change. But it is the story of one individual...
The ability to see our lives as stories and share those stories with others is at the core of what it means to be human. We use stories to order and make sense of our lives, to define who we are, even...
Advocating well with a personal story is not a call to simply “Insert Story Here.
The space between the private and the public is the nexus of the personal and the social, if not political. It’s where we meet the strong or subtle cultural censors who attempt to define what communit...
The power of your story may not lie in its drama, but in its absolutely perfect relationship to your cause.
What does it mean to be an advocate? In its broadest sense, advocacy means “any public action to support and recommend a cause, policy or practice.” That covers a lot of public actions, from displayin...
You don’t need to be a poet, a performer, a writer, or a journalist to tell your story powerfully. You do, however, need to elevate your language in ways that will bring your story to life clearly and...
You may have come to advocacy on your own, it may be part of your job or you may have been asked to “put a face” on a campaign by serving as its spokesperson. You may be acting as a lone crusader or a...
