Systems Storytelling for the Organics Waste Diversion Initiative
ROLE
Lead Designer & Facilitator
CLIENT
YEAR
Rotary Charities of Traverse City / Organics Waste Diversion Initiative
2025
summary
A participatory storytelling session designed to deepen collective learning, strengthen a narrative around organics waste diversion, and feed into the writing of the Story of Change, From Landfill to Soil: Transforming Organics Waste Management in Northwest Michigan.
This session emerged from and contributed to the ongoing Stories of Change body of work. By early 2025, the Organics Waste Diversion Initiative (OWD) had been developing shared infrastructure, advancing policy, building composting capacity, and shifting mindsets across 10 counties in Northwest Michigan for years. The question this session was designed to hold was not just what a growing network of collaborators was building through the OWD, but what becomes possible when we listen to it together?
Working in collaboration with Freya Bradford at Rotary Charities and Sarna Salzman and Kristin Page at SEEDS, I designed and facilitated a small-group storytelling and listening process, adapted from Mary Alice Arthur’s Collective Story Harvest methodology. Twenty-eight community members attended the half-day session. Three storyteller pairs shared accounts of work currently unfolding within the initiative: the Michigan Recycling Coalition's years-long advocacy for statewide Materials Management Plans; the City of Traverse City's public-private in-vessel composting pilot; and SEEDS' partnership with the World Wildlife Fund on closing food loops in K-12 schools. Listeners worked with structured listening arcs—drawn from FSG's six conditions of systems change—to harvest insights about how each story was shifting structural, relational, and transformational conditions within the system. A collective sensemaking session followed, surfacing patterns across all three stories and generating narrative threads to strengthen going forward.
The session was a systems change practice in itself—building listening capacity, deepening relationships, and creating space for mutual learning across roles and vantage points—and it was also a research method, generating story material and insight that fed directly into the published Story of Change, From Landfill to Soil: Transforming Organics Waste Management in Northwest Michigan.
key contributions
01
Designed the full session in collaboration with SEEDS and Rotary Charities, adapting the Collective Story Harvest methodology and other participatory approaches to the specific context, stories, and systems change approach of the OWD
02
Developed listening arcs based on FSG's six conditions of systems change, giving participants a structured lens for harvesting insights from each story
03
Created all facilitation materials, including storyteller guides, story host guides, and sensemaking prompts; prepared and briefed storytelling pairs in advance of the session
04
Led facilitation throughout, including an opening connection and listening activity, the small-group storytelling process, and the collective sensemaking plenary
05
Harvested narrative threads, insights, and story lines from the session and wove them into the OWD's published Story of Change
impact
The session brought together 28 participants—including OWD partners, backbone staff, state agency representatives, and newer allies—many of whom hadn't had the opportunity to learn about each other's work in depth before.
By listening across three distinct story tracks through a shared framework, participants developed a fuller picture of how the OWD's interconnected efforts were adding up to systems-level change and identified narrative threads worth strengthening as the initiative continued to grow.
The session also demonstrated, in practice, a core premise of the Stories of Change work that listening together is itself a form of learning. Story material and collective insight harvested from the session contributed directly to From Landfill to Soil, which was published in April 2026 and is part of the larger Stories of Change series cited in the Stanford Social Innovation Review.
Related links
Testimonial
“Our storytelling session with Jessica was profound. A room full of people, representing very different sectors of our local community, had a valuable opportunity to learn together and from each other. Process matters, and Jessica's skilled agenda design and facilitation allowed for a remarkable depth of topical exploration. Keeping us on our feet, speaking and listening in turn, allowed everyone to truly contribute. Not only did we get to harvest added detail and richness to key systems-changing throughlines, I know that our community is woven more tightly together because of it.”
— Sarna Salzman, Executive Director, SEEDS Ecology & Education Centers