Leading Through Stories: LIVE from Kids Brain Health Network

In a world where healthcare is a complex maze to navigate, particularly for parents of children with unique health conditions like Rett Syndrome, the power of digital storytelling comes into sharp focus. This form of communication has emerged as an incredibly powerful tool, enabling empathy, understanding, and shared experiences within the healthcare community.

Melanie Birch, a mother to a child with Rett Syndrome, offers an insightful narrative of her journey and how digital storytelling has played a pivotal role in her experiences. She uses this medium as a tool to communicate with her daughter’s therapists, classmates, and school, showcasing her daughter’s progress and experiences in a relatable and compelling way. This unique form of storytelling has even reached and impacted medical students and her child’s developmental pediatrician, promoting empathy and a deeper understanding of her daughter’s condition.

The profound impact of Melanie’s digital story didn’t stop there, demonstrating the far-reaching effects of gratitude-focused narratives in healthcare. This emphasizes the power of digital storytelling in not just capturing individual experiences but influencing larger entities within the healthcare industry.

Our other guest, Kristina is a Common Language Digital Storytelling facilitator and was in Ottawa presenting at the Kids Brain Health Network Conference. She enlightens us about her work with the Family Engagement in Research training program, showcasing how shared experiences, can offer solace and a sense of community. As we learn about Kristina’s various roles as a nurse, a mother, and a peer advisor, the extraordinary power of digital stories becomes clear. These narratives, far from being mere recounts of personal experiences, serve to invoke emotions, foster understanding, and share experiences on a broader platform.

Digital stories can be a transformative tool in healthcare advocacy, impacting not just the patient’s journey but also the healthcare community at large. This medium holds the potential to bring about a shift in how we understand and approach healthcare, especially for unique conditions like Rett Syndrome. The use of digital storytelling in research can help translate complex studies into relatable narratives, making them more accessible and impactful.

The experience of Melanie Birch as a mother and a board member of the Ontario Rett Syndrome Association offers a valuable insight into how digital storytelling can help document a family’s experiences, invoke empathy, and even impact policy changes. As we delve into her journey, we see how this medium has been a powerful tool in her advocacy work, helping to bring about change in how we perceive and handle healthcare for unique conditions like Rett Syndrome.

In conclusion, digital storytelling holds the potential to transform the healthcare landscape. It serves as a bridge, connecting personal experiences to broader audiences, invoking empathy, fostering understanding, and advocating for change. This episode underscores the importance of embracing this powerful medium in our healthcare journey, be it as caregivers, healthcare professionals, or advocates.

Melanie’s Guest Blog: Retty Syndrome Awareness

Read Melanie’s guest blog post about Rett Syndrome here or have a look at the 21 weeks photo project that led Melanie to co-create her digital story with Kristy and get involved with Common Language.

About Kids Brain Health Network

Kids Brain Health Network is a national network of researchers and health professionals dedicated to helping children with neurodevelopmental disabilities and their families. They fund collaborative research, train the next generation of developmental neuroscientists, and mobilize our findings for impact.

Learn more about KBHN here.

About Common Language DST

“Common Language was an idea that came out of a very practical need that I had for co-facilitators for projects that I was working on, but it’s quickly grown into this incredible community, and being part of a community like this was really what I’d always been looking for when I started out as a digital storytelling facilitator.”
~ Mike Lang

About Leading Through Stories

Everyone has a story to tell—and what we do with that story can create lasting impact. Every episode, Leading Through Stories, helps unravel the how and why of digital storytelling with host Kristy Wolfe.

Life is made up of meaningful moments—which ones do you want to share?

Don’t miss an episode from Leading Through Stories!

Sign up for the Leading Through Stories newsletter, follow us on Instagram @LeadingThroughStories and subscribe on your favourite podcast platform.

Through Her Lens: Cameras For Girls with Amina Mohamed – Co-Created

On this episode of Co-Created we're joined by Amina Mohamed, the Founder and Executive Director of Cameras For Girls, to talk about what happens when a founder story becomes a digital story and why that format can reveal the “three-dimensional” truth you can’t always reach in a talk, a webinar, or a standard nonprofit promo.Amina takes us from her family’s refugee journey from Uganda to Canada, through years in film and television, and back to Uganda where she meets young women facing limits on education and opportunity. From that turning point, Cameras For Girls grows into a practical pathway into media careers, combining photography training, ethical storytelling, business skills, and the gift of a camera with the real goal: helping young women enter male-dominated media spaces and land fair paid jobs in places like Uganda and Tanzania.Episode Key MessagesAmina’s origin story from Uganda to Canada and back againWhy Cameras for Girls focuses on fair paid jobsTeaching photography, business skills, and ethical storytellingRejecting extractive storytelling and top-down developmentTurning a “why” into a three-minute digital storyEditing surprises and choosing images responsiblyUsing a founder video for donors, funding, and social mediaEncouraging participants to tell their own stories in their own voiceOther Links MentionedRead this episode's blog postWatch Amina's digital storyLearn more about Cameras For GirlsAbout Our GuestAmina Mohamed is the Founder and Executive Director of Cameras For Girls, a Canadian charity she launched in 2018 to address gender inequality in Africa’s male-dominated media industry. Born in Uganda, Amina came to Canada as a refugee after her family was exiled under the regime of Idi Amin. Growing up between cultures, she discovered photography as a powerful way to express herself when words failed. That early experience shaped the vision behind Cameras For Girls: creating opportunities for young women across Africa to find their voice through visual storytelling.Through a year-long training program combining photography, ethical storytelling, and business skills, Cameras For Girls equips young women with the tools, training, and mentorship needed to build sustainable careers in media. Participants receive professional cameras, hands-on instruction, and ongoing career support designed to help them enter and succeed in the workforce. To date, the organization has trained nearly 200 women through in-person programs across East Africa and has reached more than 2,000 additional participants through its Online Learning Hub. Amina is also a leading advocate for ethical storytelling, challenging outdated and colonial narratives often present in international media. Her work emphasizes dignity-centered storytelling that honours the lived experiences of the women and communities whose stories are shared. Her leadership and impact have earned international recognition. Amina has spoken at the Vital Voices Global Leadership Summit, been featured in publications including Vogue, and received the Estée Lauder Beautiful Forces Grant in recognition of her work advancing women’s leadership.Today, Amina continues to expand Cameras For Girls’ programs across Africa while advocating for gender equality, ethical media practices, and new pathways for women to build sustainable careers in storytelling and journalism. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

1. Through Her Lens: Cameras For Girls with Amina Mohamed 24:36
2. Double the Magic: Storytelling for Healing and Impact with Melody Williamson 31:57
3. When Science Meets Story: Lessons from a PhD Defense with Becky McCall 35:57
4. Health Promoting Experiences of Storytellers: A Meta-Synthesis 49:36
5. Isolation to Impact: DST in Cancer Care with Jackdaw Bones 25:57