Digital Storytelling as a community- empowering, grassroots movement

A good way to familiarize people with new technologies - those that are tecnophobic, or "techno- reticent" - or those that simply do not have access to computers or the Internet - is through storytelling. There is today a resurgence of interest among today's education, business and organizational leaders in storytelling. What (may be - arguable ) new today about storytelling is the use of narrative as an agent for change.

We will use this space to discuss ways in  which digital storytelling can help mitigate social exclusion, through the empowerment of individuals with multimedia tools for storytelling. A 'by-product' of this process is that individuals become more critical of the messages they receive through the media. Digital storytelling maybe a stepping stone for social (or participatory) media literacy.

There is a defined methodology to go about this empowerment - very much developed - by the Center for Digital Storytelling  -with re-interpretations that vary from school to school, culture to culture. Independently of the different flavors that this methodology comes in, it is a grassroots movement, empowering of the individual, and through him/her, of his/her community. For this reason, some of the most interesting experiences have taken place with challenged communities: cultural diasporas, minorities, at-risk youth, etc etc.

Please send your thoughts - let's discuss possibilities in this area.