HGP's First Ever Story Exchange

*This is event is free to attend but pre-registration through Eventbrite is required*

We miss our volunteers at Homeless Garden Project! We’ve found a way to connect with you during Shelter in Place that brings together many of our favorite elements of community at Homeless Garden Project. It’s through a partnership with Narrative 4, and uses a methodology known as “the story exchange.”

Narrative 4 is a global organization dedicated to bringing people together for meaningful dialogue created through personal storytelling. In the story exchange, we speak from personal experience and hear the experiences of others. Stories are the threads that weave community together. Narrative 4 believes the highest purpose of storytelling is to build empathy, especially empathy that leads to action. Their motto is “Share Today. Change Tomorrow.” At Homeless Garden Project, we believe this partnership will support our goals of promoting a healthy and inclusive community and helping people “find the tools to build a home in the world.”

To that end, we invite you into a process of story exchange during which you will hear from and share with others from the Homeless Garden Project community, both some you know well and others perhaps not at all. We ask that you come with an open mind and heart, as well as a willingness to tell your story and to hear the stories of others. It will be up to you what story you tell (which typically should take 5-7 minutes), however the following prompts may help suggest an idea for your story selection.

Our first story exchange will consider the idea of “home,” in its broadest meaning. At Homeless Garden Project, many of us have a very special relationship to the farm. We are all shaped by the places where we spend our lives: our birthplace, our hometown, and places to which we move that touch us deeply. These places are the context that give content to our stories, our identities, the ways in which we narrate our lives to ourselves and others.

For many, our “home” is mostly about the people who give our lives meaning, people we love and are accountable to, who have watched us overcome challenges or grow. Here are some suggestions for your story:

• Tell a personal story that captures what it was like for you to grow up in your neighborhood or town.

• Tell a personal story about your favorite place in the town where you live. Why is this place important to you, how does it factor in your life?

• Communities can be based on many connections—education, service or volunteering, family. Tell a personal story that for you represents the best qualities of living in community with others.

• Bring an object with you which is associated with one of your most deeply held values. Tell a personal story about the significance of this object in your life.

• Tell a personal story inspired by one of the short readings. (These will be provided once you sign up.)

Finding out More about Narrative 4:

If you would like to spend some time learning more about Narrative 4 and how the story exchanges work and the effects of the experience on others, please watch the videos below or check out this article:

o “Our Story” by Narrative 4: https://vimeo.com/120529159

o “We are Narrative 4” by Narrative 4: https://vimeo.com/245441574

o http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-39727185 BBC online coverage of a recent exchange