Sophie Weldon is a strategic storytelling and community engagement specialist. She is an experienced public speaker, filmmaker and recognised leader and innovator in her field. Sophie began her social action journey at 14 after she had a deep listeningexperience with a former refugee named Adut. She believes stories have the power to connect, heal and transform us.

Stories also capture an organisation’s purpose, align employees to this purpose, increase productivity and act as a medium for communicating values & beliefs. In short, stories help us belong. Sophie has worked with key social and private sector organisations before starting her own business Humankind Enterprises.

Humankind Enterprises, established in 2015, is a social enterprise with a mission to connect people, one story at a time. They develop projects and platforms that harness the power of storytelling to create greater connection, acceptance and resilience inAustralian communities. Today, we talk about how listening is a practice and a discipline. What can the next generation and the last generation teach you about listening?

Today’s Topics:

• How Sophie is an amazing story collector, and how she has created a community of story collectors through social enterprise.
• Creating a listening culture across generations by having youth of this generation collect stories from an older generation.
• Sophie shares the role that her grandmother played in her development and journey.
• How a refugee from Sudan named Adut influenced the way Sophie shares stories and makes them heard.
• What compelled and motivated Sophie and listening with her heart.
• How just listening made a difference in Adut’s life. Through this listening, the deepest friendship of Sophie’s life was created.
• Enriching the society of the older population and creating connections.
• Powerful questions about past, present, and future that unlock the story.
• What have your strengths and successes in life been? This is a social starter question to celebrate the successes of life.
• Struggling with unreconciled stories and creating a meaningful experience.
• How do you want your family to remember you? What is your legacy?
• Sophie likes questions of the moment and stories of the present.
• Moments of freedom and beautiful reminders of hope.
• The role of silence in collecting stories.
• The story booths and pods are popup video booths that they bring into organizations, and people can use them to record stories on their own.
• Prompting with story starters based on the organisation's values.
• Helping companies to better humanize what their values are through the use of stories.
• Helping people to feel connected and heard and using micro moments to record stories and beautiful moments.
• Start with your own story, your family’s story, and your community’s story.
• It starts with each of us and treating people as you want to be treated.

Links and Resources:

• Humankind Enterprises
• StoryPod
• Sophie Weldon on LinkedIn
• @SophieWeldon2 on Twitter

Quotes:

If you want to know about listening, start to listen all around you. Sophie Weldon

There is so much we can’t see until we look for it. The same goes for listening. Sophie Weldon

My grandmother taught me to listen with my heart. She used to say the heart is the heart of the mother. Sophie Weldon

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