Voices of resilience: How storytelling is changing young lives in Nigeria

A shifting landscape of conflict and resettlement

Nigeria’s northeast states of Borno, Adamawa, and Yobe have experienced over a decade of conflict, with ongoing insurgencies by nonstate armed groups including various Boko Haram factions. In this protracted crisis, the risk of violence is a daily reality. Displacement patterns are complex: the region hosts around 2 million people internally displaced by violence in addition to 40,000 refugees from various countries of origin. Efforts to facilitate the return of displaced people to their home communities or to other regions deemed safe have led to the closure of many official refugee settlements, meaning that most people forced to flee are now living side-by-side with host communities in urban areas.

“With the insecurity, the context in which people live is really dire,” says Yves Djouwa, Associate Reporting Officer in Maiduguri. With few educational or livelihoods opportunities, some young people place themselves in harm’s way to try to secure basic resources, while many others find themselves with very little to do, leaving them grappling not only with trauma but also with an acute sense of purposelessness. At the same time, online misinformation, disinformation, and hate speech about forcibly displaced communities and humanitarian actors is a growing challenge.

Abdulrahman Bukar, Assistant Programme Cash-Based Interventions Officer, was convinced there might be a way to address both problems — false narratives circulating on social media and the lack of opportunity facing young people in the region — simultaneously. He explains: “We thought, OK, if other people — journalists and other external parties — can come here to the camps for IDPs [internally displaced people], get stories from the young people and publish them, why not the IDPs themselves?”

Cascading skills, creating opportunities

Starting from the idea that young people in the region would be eager to gain greater tools for self-expression, Bukar and Yves worked with a multifunctional team (including colleagues from protection, community services, field administration, and more) to design and pitch a project that would cascade digital storytelling skills to young people using a training-of-trainers model. Bukar explains:

“In the IDP and host communities there are quite a lot of young people who do have some basic skills but often lack platforms to express those skills, especially digital skills, that are needed to tell their stories or ensure they have access to meaningful opportunities.”

After an initial inception meeting with the community — which helped ensure the project was co-designed with community members, to reflect their needs and priorities — participants were chosen based on specific criteria to ensure they had basic literacy levels and some experience with digital tools. As a result, a significant proportion (70%) of participants were drawn from the host community, with the remainder composed of internally displaced people, all residing in the same urban community in Maiduguri.

Initially, 36 people — 13 men and 23 women, one of whom was Sa’adatu — received training in digital photography and videography skills, with an additional focus on trauma-informed approaches, social innovation, and positive storytelling. Due to the range of languages participants were comfortable in, the Co-Developmnent Hub ensured training materials were available in translation and were relevant to the context. These 36 trainers then each mentored roughly five others, ultimately cascading the skills they had learned to more than 150 young people, with remarkably strong participation from young women (105 of them!). Smartphones and tripods provided through the project equipped this cohort of young storytellers to make content that resonated with their lived experience.

‘A brighter perspective’

Putting their newfound digital and narrative skills into practice, these young participants have produced a range of visual stories — 16 of which were curated and presented to the public at an exhibition dubbed “#MyTales4Resilience” in June. The stories provided a powerful showcase of their creators’ approach to trauma healing and peacebuilding. “The exhibition was not just about celebrating the artistic talent of these young people,” Bukar says. “It was about shifting narratives. It showed how digital inclusion is a form of empowerment, how storytelling can bridge the divide.”

Equipping young people to produce their narratives was the project’s core focus, yet its positive effects have rippled outward into other domains. There are early indications that the skill-building has also resulted in enhanced livelihoods opportunities, with several of the participants already earning thanks to the digital competencies they’ve gained. Moreover, the diverse mix of participants has provided opportunities for the strengthening of social ties among displaced and host communities. Although no qualitative data has yet been definitively analyzed, the project team is optimistic that this kind of programming holds promise for social cohesion.