What You’ll Learn
- How to identify the building blocks of a personal story that is responsive to your audience
- How to polish your story delivery for any audience, based on their needs
- How to use feedback to refine your personal stories
Why This is Important
Whether you are campaigning for office, organizing for an issue, or mobilizing your community to vote, your personal stories can be your most effective asset when talking one-on-one with voters. The stories of your life experiences reflect your values and priorities, establish authentic connections with your community, and inspire others to action.
Key Resources
- Responsive Personal Stories Writing Guide
- Using Feedback to Refine Your Personal Stories Worksheet
Related Trainings
- Crafting Your Message — Integrating your personal story with your campaign’s core message is the best way to gain support from voters
- Field Tactics — When you’re out canvassing or phone banking, talking with voters one-on-one, your story can be your most effective asset. After “Using Personal Stories to Connect,” you’ll have the story part down; this course will help with everything else that goes into it!
Sara El-Amine
Trainer
Director of Advocacy, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative
Sara El-Amine is one of the world's leading experts on grassroots advocacy and organizing. She currently serves as Director of Advocacy at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan's new organization that's working to build long-term solutions to some of the world's most pressing problems, leveraging tech, social impact, engineering, and philanthropy in innovative ways. Previous to joining CZI, she served as Executive Director of OFA, President Obama's 20-million- person-strong grassroots advocacy arm, and the founding Executive Director of the Change.org Global Foundation.
She's raised over $30 million in funds for causes, trained over 60,000 volunteer leaders and staff, and helped establish organizing models that successfully passed dozens of pieces of state and national legislation.