The POWER-PAC Illinois’ Communications Committee kicked off their 2019 programming with a social media storytelling training for parent leaders at the COFI offices earlier this month.
A grant from a collaboration of the Woods Fund, McCormick Foundation and Forefront sent two POWER-PAC Illinois mother leaders, Tara Williams and Leti Toribio, and COFI Communications Coordinator, Elena Colas, to participate in three sessions of “Social Media Boot Camp” with Public Narrative, a Chicago non-profit providing communications training to journalists and other organizations. The training included social media strategy, personal storytelling, and promoting campaigns on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
The leaders, with support from Elena Colas, brought their learnings back to the POWER-PAC’s communications committee, a bilingual, bi-cultural group of mothers and grandmothers who set communications standards within POWER-PAC. Williams led the group through several exercises, including “Telling My Story” and “Three Buckets of Content.” Leaders wrote out and shared how they came to their own activism, why they stay involved, and what it means to them. The group compared the three main different types of content- personal, promotional, and thought leader- and applied them to POWER-PAC Illinois’ central campaigns.
The presentation led into a key conversation about access and ability when it comes to social media, and leaders outlined steps that should be taken to provide further training for those who wish to learn more about how to use different platforms. Group members also expressed the importance of communicating in ways that reach all families, regardless of access to technology, through the POWER-PAC Illinois Newsletter and continuing to build meaningful one-on-one relationships in the community.
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