Community Reporting is a digital storytelling movement that started in 2007. At its essence, is people using digital tools such as smartphones, tablets and now Zoom to gather lived experience stories from people that they know. Using the Internet, digital media, events and much more, the Community Reporter movement shares these stories with other people, groups and organisations who are in a position to make positive social change.

Fundamental to Community Reporting is the belief that stories are vehicles that build bridges between people and support common understanding. The Community Reporters gather stories on all kinds of topics from across different countries. Take Patrick’s story for example. In this story he shares his experience of volunteering during the pandemic. You can also look at aar0nn’s story about their visit to the Poppy Trail in the Remembrance Woodland area at Rozelle Park or listen to the story Mistarareunite captured in Germany about a Computer Science student’s experiences of physical distancing measures. You also might want to hear what vanessa123 says about her experiences of with social workers or Shaked’s story about applying for asylum.

The Community Reporter website currently has over 5700 stories of people’s experiences of world and here at People’s Voice Media we are completely committed to working with our movement to use the knowledge in these stories to create social change. We do this in various ways, such as writing policy papers (like this one on re-humanising public services), creating short video edits on specific topics (like this one aimed at opening up a conversation about FGM), releasing playlists of extracts on specific topics that share different perspectives (like these on co-production) and much more.

But we know that none of this would be possible without our Community Reporters and their stories. So as part of Make A Difference Day 2020, we want to say a heartfelt thank you to everyone who has shared a story with us over the years and have played their part – one story at a time – in making our world a better place to be!