MOHAN Foundation hosted a Masterclass on "Story Telling," a session for its employees, on March 5, 2022, which was supported by SBI Foundation.

The workshop was intended for staff who have difficulty in writing reports. The workshop's specific goal was to educate participants on various aspects of thinking and to familiarize them with the various uses and functions of report writing. The training was held via the Zoom App, and all participants were able to join from their laptops or desktops.

Dr. Hemal Kanvinde welcomed all the participants and guests at the start of the session. Ms. Lavanya Krishnakumar was the resource faculty for the session.

Ms. Lavanya Krishnakumar has a degree in English and in psychology. She also has training in Arts Based Therapy from Bapu Trust. Starting as a primary school teacher, she went on to work with various NGOs like CRY and Tanker Foundation. She also worked as a Project Coordinator with Prasari Effects and Sony Image Works. Presently, she is on the board of Trustees of Golden Butterflies Children’s Palliative Care Foundation (GBCPCF), Chennai and represents the GB Bandwagon (Art & Recreational Therapy).

She shared with the participants that the session will be entirely focused on a group exercise. She then asked the participants to come forward and give their names as well as a sentence that best described them.

Six groups of three to four people were formed. She began the session with an activity called Spinning Yawns, which featured themes and scenarios for the various groups to come up with a story line so that participants could come up with a few characters with general characteristics such as physical appearance, location, and identity in under five minutes. As a result, groups were divided into breakout rooms for discussion.

Then she urged the group members to come up with plot components, or plot tools, to help them continue with the storyline and create a narration. Then she requested a storyboard, which entailed taking a section of their separate narrative and illustrating it on a blank page using colours.

Lastly, she devised a case study for the participants to read and extract the most significant data, compile a list, and write it up in seven sentences as a narrative in under ten minutes.

The session came to a close with this exercise, and she finally told the story and asked a question, which she invited the attendees to respond to in an email to her.

The training was a dynamic learning experience for the participants. They developed a good working grasp of writing from a notch by the end of the session.

Dr. Hemal Kanvinde, Quality Assurance Officer, MOHAN Foundation gave the vote of thanks at the end.

Feedback from the participants:

• Thank you for the wonderful session
• Story is all about emotion

Close to 30 participants attended the session.