Change: Stories for the heart - Statistics for the mind

People change for different reasons and by different influences. These reasons are usually either linked to the rational or emotional. In advocacy it is about making sure the right statistic or story is produced to the right person at the right time. Advocacy is more of an art than a science, but this does not imply that it is random and by chance. Advocacy and more particularly advocacy campaigning in aiming to achieve positive social change is very strategic, very focused.

At the heart of this work is a mixture of courage and vulnerability. The right mix can bear fruits, the bad mix can yield genocide. In my experience deep human relationships are formed mostly through adversity, not through triumph. They are formed when people are at their most vulnerable, most defenceless, most open. Marketers know this when they have used starving children in Africa to raise money for Aid appeals. They have appealed to a human emotion that opens peoples hearts and makes them want to act. I would suggest that we must take this one step further. We must engage the human heart with the human spirit. In doing so we engage not only sorrow and despair but also all the other aspects of this human existence; happiness, joy, laughter etc. etc.

One of the most powerful ways of opening the human heart is to engage them in human stories. As a species humans love knowing about other humans, they are drawn to their stories, it is in our DNA. This does not mean that stories have to be about hardship or poverty but more about sharing the same human experience we all recognise; life, death, hope, despair. Once the heart is open people want to respond to that story. In theatres people clap, in fundraisers people pay, in the family people hug.

As an campaigner I see that space between the moment the human heart opens and the need to respond fills it, as the most important opportunity. As in science when a space is empty, it only remains so briefly, as something else soon fills it. I suggest when that human heart is open we as campaigners have the responsibility to present how it may be filled. Now I am not talking about donating money or converting to specific world view, I suggesting that that space be filled with compassion, with understanding and with the tools to be more aware of each individual action they take.

Some also say this is a time for presenting the facts, the data. So that when people act they do it not just through emotion but through understanding. This may be so however we should be careful that we do not take from the individual their experience of understanding and replace it with our own. Such efforts will only be short lived. In my experience humans who connect with other human stories keep them for life. Those stories are told through the generations, over and over again. Statistics, no matter how important only last a while. That is because the human experience through stories go back to our origins, the expression of its experience presented through statistics change for every second we are alive. This is the artwork of life.