Sharing Stories and Learning to Listen

Monday, March 12, 2018 - Playa Chiquita, Limon, Costa Rica

Students from The Media School at Indiana University began a week of service learning with a story exchange using the methodology developed by Narrative 4, a nonprofit dedicated to "building a community of empathetic global citizens who improve the world through the exchange of personal narratives."

The core methodology of N4 centers around a story exchange, which pairs participants and asks each participant to their partner’s story in the first-person. The story exchange works on a simple idea: If I can hear your story deeply enough to retell it in my own words, as if it happened to me – and you can do the same for my story – then we will have seen the world through each other’s eyes.