Rebekah Garcia: Hi, my name is Rebekah Garcia. I'm an attorney with Legal Aid of North Carolina, which is an LSC funded organization that provides direct legal representation in all 100 counties in North Carolina. When we started collecting stories for the Medicaid Monitoring Advocacy project, we really couldn't have guessed the impact that our stories would have on our organization as a whole. For many of us at Legal Aid, myself included, story collection has always been about telling the story of our clients through our own words and for our own purposes. And this is still really important for our work and critical that we continue to do this. However, collecting the stories of persons with Medicaid experience has really shown us the power of elevating the voices of our clients and our client based population. Giving individuals full control over how their story is captured, for example - through writing audio or visual - and also how it is shared has added deeper meaning and significant powers to the stories. At first, collecting stories was extremely daunting. This is not something most of us at Legal Aid had any experience doing, but through a lot of trial and also a lot of error. We have been able to integrate story collection into our entire organization. We found platforms that are easy to use for both participants and collectors, for example, Vocal Video. And then we started training all of our staff. We wanted to give everyone the tools to feel like they had the ability to become client centered story collectors. What is so exciting about this project in addition to collecting the stories of incredible individuals across all 100 counties in North Carolina is that it has really reinvigorated our staff. It has started to ingrain client stories in many of our important decisions and we've been able to form deeper connections with our communities. We are so excited to see how story collection at Legal Aid of North Carolina continues and see how we can continue to incorporate it into our work. It is something that we have loved doing and we would encourage any LSC funded organization to do the same. Thanks so much.
