Centering Love in Narrative Change: An Interview with Love Now Media

The WOMEN’S WAY Change the Narrative Fellowship trains and empowers women with lived experiences of economic insecurity to share their stories through professional-level audio, visual, and print in order to generate awareness of racial and gender inequities in economic opportunity and spur action to improve economic security in the Greater Philadelphia region.

As a part of the 6-month long Fellowship, Fellows participate in a series of storytelling workshops to learn about and practice using narrative change techniques. This year, the newest cohort of ten Fellows from Community College of Philadelphia is working directly with Love Now Media, an empathy-centered multi-platform storytelling enterprise, to prepare their stories.

We recently had the opportunity to talk with two members of the Love Now Media team, Jos Duncan Asé (Founder, Executive Producer, and Publisher) and Syreeta Martin (Director of Programs and Communications), to learn more about how Love Now Media is working to amplify acts of love at the intersection of social justice, wellness, and equity; get insight into the Designing Love Storytelling Program that has been adapted for the Change the Narrative Fellowship; and discuss what it’s been like working with the third cohort of Fellows.

“What we’re doing is taking a look at the Fellows’ personal stories, some of the beliefs that they may hold, and some of the experiences that they’ve had as it relates to being directly and indirectly affected by policies that marginalize or oppress people or contribute to systemic injustices. We’re working to use their personal stories as a way to really examine the systems that they’ve encountered.

I think it’s important to not only do that for their personal stories but to look at their families and the people who were in power in their households, in their communities, and in their cities to really think about the ways their personal experiences overlap with or intersect with the gender wealth gap and some of the inequalities that large numbers of people are also experiencing due to similar policies. We’re looking at all of that through our work over the course of 14 sessions.”

Click here to read the full blog post and learn more about Love Now Media and their work with this year's cohort of Change the Narrative Fellows.