Tell your story

"Tell Your Story was developed to explore new tools for preventing early school leaving. While storytelling is increasingly used in non-formal animation, it is rarely combined with new technologies and more particularly with geographic information systems (GIS). The consortium behind this project, coordinated by Pistes-Solidaires, has therefore sought to explore this new path, thanks to the meeting of several actors in non-formal continuing education and universities. The idea was to involve young dropouts in digital mapping storytelling workshops so that they could share their stories with potential dropouts, to make them think about the impact on their lives of such a decision. The final objective was therefore to prevent the latter's dropping out of school, through media productions to which they are accustomed with, for example, social networks, as part of a peer education process.Pistes-Solidaires (France), CESIE (Italy), Rinova (United Kingdom) and RIS (Slovenia) provided expertise in non-formal methods while die Berater, an Austrian training centre, provided technical and numerical knowledge. Finally, Eurogeo (Belgium), the European association of geographers, was able to contribute very largely through its knowledge of GIS, in particular the ArcGIS platform.The project was structured in seven phases. During the first, the consortium worked on an overview of the use of storytelling in the fight against early school leaving, and on the best way in which storytelling could be used by digital mapping. This production, coordinated by Eurogeo, laid the foundations for the next phase. This consisted in the creation of a two-part curriculum for school dropouts and potential school dropouts. The first part was an introduction to storytelling, while the second part was intended to allow young people to create their own personal story through digital mapping by acquiring new skills, using the ArcGIS platform. The creations were then presented on an online exhibition. This was finally used in a module tested with young people at risk of dropping out: they were able to discover the stories presented and discuss with the facilitators in order to reflect on the risks of dropping out. The first feedback from the participants was very positive. The project was concluded with the creation of a publication that presents the project, its methodology and results.Tell Your Story was set up through partnerships with schools, youth organisations, training institutes, local authorities and reached 200 young people, dropouts and potential dropouts, as well as some 50 organisations working with them. The impact of the project, reinforced by the dissemination events, is likely to continue: several organisations have already asked to be trained to use the tools developed, in particular the ""Institut du Travail Social de Pau"", which is organising a seminar on ""school drop in"" the 31th of January 2019 during which educators and National Education staff will be trained in this method. A second training session will be implemented for educators in the Pau conurbation on February 1st, while another session for educators in a home-shelter (la Sauvegarde) will be implemented on February 25th and 26th, 2019. In this context, the workshops are implemented directly for 10 young people from one of their homes, in the presence of educators, psychologists, teachers and department heads who wish to be trained in this method and these tools."