Rosalind “Roz” Pichardo’s story is the type that makes you need to fall in your knees, increase your palms to the skies, and implore the heavens for a solution.
For Pichardo, the reply is activism – and he or she’ll describe it Tuesday at Mission Story Slam #12, a first-person storytelling occasion meant to encourage kindness, empathy and activism.
“Typically it’s important to flip a trauma into energy,” she stated.
When Pichardo was an adolescent, her ex-boyfriend threw her off an overpass. Miraculously, she survived. That very same day, he fired a number of bullets at her as she walked residence on Erie Avenue. Miraculously, he missed.
When she turned onto her road, she noticed yellow crime scene tape in every single place. “I assumed my household was useless,” she stated. As a substitute, her new boyfriend, who had been ready for her exterior, was shot and killed.
Just a few years later, her twin sister, affected by her personal demons, killed herself. A dozen years after that, her brother was murdered.
And, only a few days in the past, somebody shot two males simply down the road from Pichardo’s residence in Kensington. One died there. Pichardo and others labored heroically and stopped the opposite man from bleeding to dying.
Now Pichardo leads Operation Save Our Metropolis, which operates Sunshine Home, a storefront on Kensington Avenue. The group helps households of gun violence victims and teaches youngsters the right way to use tourniquets to cease bleeding and the right way to save individuals from drug overdoses. Meals, garments and different assist can be found for the unhoused and addicted. Clerks at nook shops have been educated in lifesaving strategies and given emergency first-aid kits. (Pichardo was additionally a 2021 Billies Award nominee.)
“While you expertise the loss, do one thing now,” she stated. “Serving to individuals, saving individuals, and loving individuals — all on the identical time. That’s gratifying. And that’s how you’re going to heal your self.”
Pichardo can be certainly one of 10 to 12 storytellers at Outdated Metropolis’s Nationwide Mechanics Bar on June 10. Every storyteller takes the stage for 5 minutes, connecting their private tales with their group’s mission, and tying them into the night time’s theme, “The Time Is Now.”
Tuesday’s occasion will observe the everyday story slam format. Organizers set the theme, curating a number of audio system. Different audio system come from the viewers. They present up, drop their names into the “Horn & Hardart Espresso Can of Future” in hopes of being chosen in a random drawing.
A 3-judge panel and the viewers rating the storytellers. A complete of $350, in two money prizes, is at stake.
How Mission Story Slam started
What makes Mission Story Slam completely different is its origin.
The concept got here from David “Dave” Winston, a producer at PWPvideo, a Germantown firm that creates movies for nonprofits and sustainable companies.
In an earlier life, Winston had run a comedy membership on Sansom Avenue and have become acquainted with the concept of story slams – just like stand-up comedy as a result of tales are instructed, however not comparable in how and why.
“I like telling tales and I like the setting of the story slam, which is so completely different from stand-up comedy. Stand-up is adversarial. The comic is there to make the viewers snort. It’s rowdy,” he stated, with a possible for catcalls and heckling. Against this, the story-slam viewers is “a really supportive and nurturing group. They need you to succeed.”
So Winston pitched the Mission Story Slam concept to his boss, Michael Schweisheimer, PWPvideo’s founder.
For advertising functions, wouldn’t it make sense to spend extra time with their shoppers, who are usually attention-grabbing individuals and enthusiastic about their work? And, on the aspect of giving again, perhaps they might assist these shoppers and others unfold the phrase about their missions.
“We video all of the tales, put them on-line, and we’re creating free sharable content material” for them, Winston stated.
‘I’m ready the place I may also help’
At one of many previous Mission Story Slams, Germantown ceramic artist Karen Singer stood as much as communicate.
Singer’s story was riveting. She had been in an abusive marriage. However like many others in that state of affairs, she denied its actuality to herself, at the same time as, in years of self-loathing, she criticized herself for tolerating the abuse.
Then, sooner or later, she attended a gathering of Ladies In Transition (WIT), a Philadelphia nonprofit that helps individuals in home violence conditions. She listened to tales from the others – girls from all walks of life, from all races, and lessons. They might have been telling her story.
“What I spotted was that I had been unfavorable to myself and that was a part of what stored me trapped,” Singer stated. She would have by no means criticized the ladies in that room as cowards and losers, but that was the in-her-head method she described herself.
Singer instructed the viewers that the conclusion was her turnaround second. “I made a vow to respect myself and to cease beating myself up for this,” she stated. With WIT’s assist, she left her abuser, obtained a divorce, and constructed a brand new life together with her son and a brand new husband.
That night time, Singer’s story earned WIT a $250 money prize. “I actually hit it and I really feel actually good about it,” Singer stated. “WIT gave me all this superb help, remedy, and so forth., and now I’m ready the place I may also help different individuals get this assist.”
Lately, Singer sits on WIT’s board and WIT makes use of the video of her story slam debut on social media, on its web site, and in appeals to donors.
“It’s not a TED Speak. It’s not an elevator pitch,” Winston stated. “It’s about them personally. It’s about what that individual individual resonates with. Why is that this individual giving her life to combating sexual abuse, or spousal abuse, or working for the setting, no matter their trigger is, or housing or poverty? Why are they serving to drug addicts? Why are they serving to underserved communities?
“That’s the story we go after once we interview individuals for movies. That’s the guts of what motivates all of their actions,” he stated. “That’s extremely shifting. It’s humorous, it’s touching, and that’s the guts of fine storytelling.”
FYI
Mission Story Slam, PWPvideo, Tuesday, June 10, Nationwide Mechanics Bar, 22 S. 3d St., Philadelphia. Doorways open at 6 p.m., showtime at 7. Tickets can be found on-line or on the door.