Promoting Storytelling by Indigenous Women-led Organizations

Building off May 2019 work centered on helping indigenous women leaders to understand, develop, and share their personal narratives and actionable feedback, PSYDEH now helps their civil society organizations (CSO) network to tell their group’s stories in their own professional-quality promotional videos. 

PSYDEH’s multi-nationality storytelling training team, funded by our ongoing global “Fruits of Change” crowdfunding campaign, recently made a 3-day trip to the Nahua community of Santa Ana Tzacuala, and the Otomí communities of San Francisco de La Laguna and La Flor, where we met with women leaders of the CSOs. These videos, co-produced by photographer Diogo Heber and the women themselves, give the CSOs a public relations platform they use for sustaining their impact-making work, e.g., securing partners for future projects and convincing public authorities to accept their policy demands.

This June work asks women leaders to reflect on their journey together over the past four years and to tell this story to the world. Each organization has chosen a unique theme for their video. The women leaders of Yolki Ino Yolo, for example, focus in part on their textile cooperative Yoltika Moda Artesanal. The leaders of Mujeres con Futuro focus on what it has meant for them to collaborate across different communities, and to represent their communities at the municipal and state levels.

The team was accompanied by Denise Roldán, Mexican writer, animation director and collaborator with PSYDEH. After observing the storytelling project in action, Denise says:

 “I saw the concrete impact the storytelling training is having. PSYDEH uses the narrative to nurture women’s power through the process of telling and owning their important stories. They are stories full of success and tragedies overcome, as indigenous women and leaders, stories of themselves, their families, communities, and organizations. And I like to think that, despite the many kilometers that separate their homes from my own, that as women we are made of the same stories. All of us, at some point in our lives, are affected by things that hurt us deeply, but by sharing and understanding these experiences, we are able to continue on our paths with greater strength.”

Storytelling field work wraps up in August/September. Final work products will be completed by the end-of-2019.