Stories spotlight the secret ingredient to success

Yesterday was a day full of stories, here at Kufunda Village in Zimbabwe.

We started already the day before, briefing our storytellers and our young hosts about the process of Collective Story Harvest. Both groups were nervous, but excited too.

Then after our music and dance check in with the circle of 80+ the process was introduced.

We told them there would be 8 simultaneous stories around the themes we'd identified as strengths of Kufunda Village:

• A sense of possibility
• Recognising myself and my value
• Everyone welcome
• Participating with others/community
• Open to Learning
• Practicing gentle change
• Practicing appreciation
• Coming home to health

We had a set of very inspiring stories including one who had come as a groom to deliver horses and stayed to find community; a widow who discovered she was actually a gifted teacher; someone who came home to community after mental health issues; someone who came with his brother as a security guard and discovered his love for permaculture... It was a hard choice for the audience.

Story groups happened in the buildings, around the stones and under the trees.

People came back visibly moved and sat together by Listening Thread to harvest in café style.

Even though we learned a lot about each of the Listening Threads (shared in a previous post), there were two overarching takeaways.

First that Kufunda uses social technologies to practice community together that really work.

This community produces the second outcome -- love. People stood up again and again to share that love made all the difference to who they felt they could be and become. For those of you looking for transformative change, it is at the heart of people, not in a training, a team building or a vision statement or a corporate values exercise. Twenty-one years at Kufunda proves this approach works.