‘The enemy is the one whose story you don’t know ‘. This is a spot on statement by Gene Knudsen Hoffman (1919-2010), certainly in today’s society where we take less and less time to listen to each other’s stories. In fact, stories about each other are often used to stir up fear of the other. As a result, we are slowly but surely entering a society where fear is the prominent factor, rather than having an understanding of each other.

The Storytelling Centre turns this around, so on the basis of stories we can:

• bring together specifically people with different backgrounds/identities;
• increase the sense of social security of young people from a minority;
• bring together young people to increase mutual acceptance and understanding;
• work on intercultural dialogue;
• strengthen participants: work on self confidence, expressing themselves (presenting);
• combat prejudice;
• by putting listening central next to telling, contribute to self reflection.

Fortunately, more and more organisations are finding out storytelling is a great means to bring people together. Because storytelling is about both the narrator ánd the listener and precisely because it brings them into contact with each other, storytelling projects create bonding. And it is precisely this bonding and connection that is necessary to work towards an understanding and peaceful society.