Image by © Yan Cong
In this webinar on Ethical Storytelling, hosted in collaboration with the USAID Asia Counter Trafficking in Persons project, panelists share their perspectives on ethical practices and lessons learned that could enable anti-trafficking organizations, researchers, journalists, and practitioners to tell a story that resonates with their intended audiences while doing justice to the people in the center of these narratives.
During the session, you hear from a survivor that leads a survivor support group in Bangladeshi communities, an organization that started a movement for a new standard of storytelling, and a photographer that incorporates ethics in the many decisions that an artist must make in documenting sensitive issues.
We discuss the importance of deep consent, how to navigate competing priorities between client-facing and donor-facing storytellers, and how nuanced stories of small and big successes can help to build more realistic donor expectations.
We explore the story of one Cambodian woman who migrated to China for marriage and the process of telling a story that humanizes the Cambodian woman as well as the Chinese man in a brokered marriage.
And, we are reminded to rethink survivor protection issues at the community level and ensure we are not sharing personally identifiable information of survivors. As practitioners, the best interest of our beneficiaries must always be the priority, and organizational concerns must come after that.
Speakers:
Lucy McCray, The Freedom Story
Yan Cong, Visual Storyteller
Reshma Khatun, ANIRBAN
Natasha Burley (Moderator), Winrock International
Relevant resources
Please find below a list of resources on the topic, some of which we mentioned during the discussion and some additional ones:
The Ethical Storytelling Initiative and Pledge: A community of practitioners engaging the messy yet beautiful conversation around storytelling in the social impact space, bringing together resources and discussions on the topic.
Senior Policy Operating Group Public Awareness and Outreach Committee Guide For Public Awareness Materials: Guidelines for Messaging, Use of Images and Awareness Raising published by the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons (TIP Office) last week.
The guidelines are based on Freedom United’s #MyStoryMyDignity Campaign and Pledge.
Rights Lab at the University of Nottingham provides an online archive of modern slavery survivor testimonies, and have published a report which addresses the use of survivor voices in discussion and research into modern Slavery.
Photographers without Borders connects volunteer storytellers from all over the world to document assignments together with community partners.
Our Guidance Note on the Usage of Victim Images includes principles that need to be observed when making the decision whether to use a vulnerable person’s image or not, a checklist of key principles, as well as a proposed form of consent letter.