Resource Center

Introduction

Sandy and Nizar started to collaborate in 2017 to teach Public Narrative to a group of Vietnam Education Foundation (VEF) fellows. Since then, they have trained thousands of leaders in Southeast Asia, North Africa, and the Middle East. In May 2020, they adapted their training to conduct this training virtually using a combination of synchronous and asynchronous approach. In addition, they created Inspire Leadership School, an online platform to provide opportunities for students to learn at their own pace prior to the live training. This course is available in Vietnamese language as well. Besides teaching in English, Sandy also teaches in Vietnamese and Nizar in Arabic.

Over the years, Sandy and Nizar have worked with our Public Narrative alumni from our training to create culturally and linguistically appropriate materials and examples. We asked our participants to model their Story of Self, Us, and Now. As a result, we now have relevant materials and examples to teach leaders in Southeast Asia and the Middle East.

Here are a few examples:

• Dr. Duong Duy Khoa – Public Narrative in Vietnamese
• Kotchakom Voraakhom – A landscape architect from Thailand. She took the Public Narrative training as part of the Equity Initiative Fellowship Program

Below Sandy and Nizar have kindly shared their videos of Public Narrative Training.

Debriefing Nila – Story of Self (14:39 mins)

This video illustrates the process of creating an effective Story of Self. Nila provides an insight into the process of revising her Story of Self.

 

Story of Us (7:41 mins)

This video provides an example of the many “us” that we identify ourselves with.

 

Story of Now – Theory of change (5:26 mins)

This video provides an explanation of the Theory of Change using a specific and real example.

 

Story of Now – What is the Motivating Vision? (4:31 mins)

An explanation of the importance of creating the “dream” and the “nightmare” using a specific example.

 

Story of Self, Us, Now by Joy with feedback and coaching (22:43 mins)

An example of coaching all three stories – Self, Us, and Now.

 

Cold Facts or Warm Stories: Girl Effect (9:55 mins)

An example of how telling a story is much more effective in motivating people to act.

 

Obama’s 2004 Democratic National Convention Keynote Speech – Telling a story with a purpose (14:33 mins)

An analysis of Obama’s 2004 Democratic National Convention Keynote Speech.

 

About the Instructors

Sandy Hoa Dang is a social entrepreneur, inspiring speaker, experienced executive, leadership trainer, and management consultant. Her passion is to develop young people to maximize their leadership potential to benefit society. Ms. Dang is the Co-founder and Principal of CoInnovate Consulting, a company that provides leadership training, capacity building, and strategic planning. Sandy has been teaching Public Narrative in English and Vietnamese to leaders in ten ASEAN countries plus China and here in the United States since 2017. In 2020, she partnered with Nizar Farsakh to create Inspire Leadership School.

From 2011 to 2018, Ms. Dang served as a Presidential Appointee on the Board of Directors and Executive Director of the Vietnam Education Foundation (VEF), an independent U.S. Government agency with a mission to strengthen the bilateral relations between United States and Vietnam. For more than a decade, she served as Founder and Executive Director of Asian American Leadership, Empowerment, and Development (AALEAD), an organization that supports immigrant and refugee families through a broad array of educational and social services. Ms. Dang has received numerous awards for her outstanding public leadership, including being named as an Outstanding American by Choice and a Washingtonian of the Year in 2001. Ms. Dang earned a Bachelor’s degree from Duke University and a Master’s degree from Harvard Kennedy School.

Nizar Farsakh has been teaching Public Narrative for over 10 years with broad experience across the Arab world as well as in the US. He was a TA with Marshall in 2010 for a year where he was responsible for 16 students each term, running weekly section meetings, reviewing written work and guiding learning. Along with the rest of the teaching team, he developed and refined course pedagogy and content, as well as contextualizing it for Arab audiences. Since then, Nizar has led training sessions in Iraq, Palestine, Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, and Morocco. He also ran several online training sessions with trainees from across the Arab world. Nizar worked with other Arab public narrative trainers to develop materials and collect examples relevant to Arab audiences. In 2020, he co-found Inspire Leadership School with his Vietnamese American colleague Sandy Dang where they have been developing a variety of ways to teach narrative online and in different formats that accommodate the learners’ circumstances including creating an array of asynchronous teaching materials. – https://www.inspireleadershipschool.com/pages/instructors

About Inspire Leadership School

At Inspire Leadership School, we believe everyone can take up leadership. We follow the definition of leadership from our professor, Dr. Marshall Ganz. According to Prof. Ganz, “leadership is about accepting responsibility to enable others to achieve a shared purpose in the face of uncertainty.”

Imagine what our world would look like if everyone is taking up responsibility to bring people together to solve today’s challenges. We know our world needs this kind of leadership to combat climate change, economic inequity, violence and extremism, racism, and more. That is why we created Inspire Leadership School to bring about positive change through Public Narrative and Organizing. For more information, please visit us here.