Le storie per l'empowerment

Over the last years, within the scientific community, school actors and the whole education and training world there is a growing awareness of the importance of narrative thinking in people's life. Through narrative thinking people are able to make sense of what they have done, to imagine the future and to provide structure to their present life. Through reading, writing, dialogue and active listening it is possible to improve both our ability to organize thought and action and sense making activities. Numerous disciplinary fields such as narrative pedagogy, literary theory, cultural psychology, everyday life sociology, anthropology have contributed to the development of the narrative counselling methodologies. In this way narrative counselling has developed tools that are suited to transform people's counselling competences such as decision making, planning, facing difficulties, sense making, pacing. Such competences can be useful in the course of the entire life cycle, in any context, from training to professional environments. Within counselling training, narrative counselling methodologies employ qualitative, non-directive, people centred methods. Its explicit aim is people empowerment, i.e. the development of their ability to identify their own objectives and to find the resources needed to reach them.