It was an intense week, in which we learned about the power of the stories. To a better effect I recommend playing this song, as a sound track for this post: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEm0AjTbsac&t

Each of us needs to connect to emotions so we can build relationships around us or be motivated to take action. Saying a good story in an important moment it can save lives, can motivate people to do brave things, can convince people to fight for their passions.

I am working with thousands of teachers and children, and each one of them is a story meant to be heard. It is a story about how education can change Romania in a country you want to live in, it is a story about how each citizen should fight for the common good. This training helped me a lot in how to tell the stories of this amazing heroes that I work with every day. One of the most useful information received it is about storytelling structures/technique. Because it can be helpful to anyone, I decided to make a short summary here:

- In Media Res Structure- when you start with the end of the story so we can catch the attention

- The hero’s journey Structure- when you show what a certain character went through (the hero is called to leave their home and sets out on a difficult journey. They move from somewhere they know into a threatening unknown place)

- The mountain Structure- shows how the drama and the tension escalates in a story

- Nested loop - is a technique that involves more stories to sustain a central message

- Sparklines Structure- is a technique wich mix up the reality with hope to sustain a powerful message of change.

- Converging Ideas Structure- is a way of telling a story that brings together more ideas, relationship, characters.

- False star Structure- when you start with a detail from the story that can predict a plot that in the end is surprising and totally different that we thought at the beginning of the story

- Petal structure Structure- is a technique that tells multiple stories, but one by one before returning back to the central story. The other stories sustain the main argument/story.

Beside this structures, another important thing that I learned is always start your story answering to the question WHY? This way you connect with people from the beginning, and you motivate them to listen to you..you make them curious.

Collecting and writing a good story isn't an easy task. We exercise this too in our training,but gaining someone’s trust so that they can share with you their story it is a bit challenging.I learned that you have to know how to listen and how to show that you are genuinely interested about the story people are willing to tell.

I also enjoyed having this training experience with this amazing people from Poland, Norway, Turkey, Macedonia, Lithuania, Bulgaria, Spain, Italy and Romania. Each of them carry the story of their country and their people. I learnd a lot from them and even if we are different in some aspects, we are all good people, smart, kind and respectfull and I am so lucky to have met them!