Melanie Griswold
PROJECTS
This portfolio will be broken up into three parts- my story of self, my story of us, and my story of now in the sub pages. This model of telling your public story is a theory founded by community organizer, Marshall Ganz. In his outline of “Telling Your Public Story”, he shares, “stories not only teach us how to act- they inspire us to act. Stories communicate our values through the language of the heart, our emotions. And it is what we feel- our hopes, our cares, our obligations- not simply what we know that can inspire us with the courage to act.” Ganz believed that a story contained a plot and the “plot” of our life consists of a challenge, choice, and outcome. These components to a plot are what allows us to inspire and have the power to move others to recover from challenges, choose to act, and move forward towards change. Challenge, choice, and outcome are how I have approached learning and interacting with individuals from start to finish in order to create concrete change.
According to Ganz’s theory of storytelling in his work of “Public Narrative, Collective Action, and Power” there are three elements to a story, the plot, the character, and the moral. The plot describes “how we make choices in the present based on remembering the past and imagining the future” (Ganz, 281). This is an approach someone may use to determine their vocation in life, looking at the past, living fully in the present, and envisioning the future. The character is the way in which we engage with the “emotional content” of the story, allowing the receiver to connect with the character and become inspired. Lastly, the moral is how “stories teach” (Ganz, 282). According to Ganz, the moral can teach us how to act in the “right” way allowing that experience of hope to “move us to act.” Through the story of self, story of us, and story of now model it encompasses the aligning factors of the plot, character, and moral with the elements of challenge, choice, and outcome within each section of the story. This model will show how my discovery was not just of the self, but how along the way I discovered how to choose “right” action in order to create change among individuals and communities.
It is the very people, experiences, and values that I uncovered unconsciously through the use of sharing my story, listening to others, and enacting change from these experiences in my classes, travels, and relationships that have created the content of my narrative.
Story Sections
Story of Self
This section will give a foundation of my values and why I am called to serve. It will depict different “challenges” that I have faced that are central to my identity and how I approach the “why” and “how” to engaging with individuals and communities. This section of my portfolio is vulnerable and heavily focused on my faith due to it being the core to my identity. In leading two retreats for underclassman, I was asked to speak on behalf of my testimony of faith both times. My final testimony talk given as a senior will be shared in this section. This section will demonstrate how I grew in my faith from childhood to adulthood but also in my approach to service moving from being complacent to asking critical questions to redirect my energy and efforts to action in both my personal and public life.
Story of Us
The second section will depict how I began my call to action based on the values I had in my story of self. I made a “choice” to engage with certain communities, experiences, and research that align with my values and goals. This section will depict both global and local efforts in sequential order to when they occurred. The “us” explains how I participated with others in Providence, Rhode Island to Nicaragua. The project in Nicaragua titled “voices across borders” was my first encounter and dialogue with Ganz’s storytelling model and was the framing model for our workshops with the youth. Many of these global and local initiatives focus on uncovering resources to meet psychological needs, fostering ways for youth and marginalized voices to be heard, and finding solutions to create sustainable change.
Story of Now
Lastly, the “now” will show how I will begin to use my experiences to move forward. This third part of my narrative will depict my “outcomes.” It will visually and reflectively show how I intend to use my story of self and story of us to create my present reality in the story of now. It will demonstrate the populations and issues I hope to work with based on my values that I will carry with me in the present and future. These pieces I chose were written and created more informally to think through my own personal vision of what I believe in, in order to embody what I value in my personal life and how that can enter into my work in the future.