A book by Linde Zingaro, Speaking Out: Storytelling for Social Change, provides a framework for how storytelling is employed in social-change efforts:

For some, the disclosure of their own stories of marginalization has become a tool for advocacy, for telling a larger truth; for others, self-disclosure is a more personal action, intended to assist those isolated in their suffering in developing trust and connection.

Here are some recent discoveries of venues and projects that focus on, as the book’s description calls it, the transformative potential of storytelling as significant social action. I’ve divided them into three categories, though considerable overlap exists in the categories:

1. Projects that tell stories of specific populations to encourage aid to those populations or recruit change agents.
2. Projects that, through stories, tell members of populations they are not alone and enable them to compare notes about their struggles.
3. Storytelling tools for social change.

Projects that tell stories of specific populations to encourage aid to those populations or recruit change agents

Changents enables change agents around the world to broadcast their amazing stories of creating change and mobilize help from friends everywhere. Changents could also be classified as a storytelling tool for social change. View the group’s video.

MiWorld bills itself as “the first global humanitarian Internet portal to feature engaging stories of real people in even the most remote parts of the developing world.”

Invisible People, is a vlog with the purpose of making the invisible — homeless people — visible. “I hope these people and their stories connect with you and don’t let go. I hope their conversations with me will start a conversation in your circle of friends,” says site founder Mark Horvath.

Projects that, through stories, tell members of populations they are not alone and enable them to compare notes about their struggles.

The Frontlines provides members of the armed forces, veterans, family and friends a platform to creatively share their stories from the frontlines.

Several sites in which women tell the stories of having abortions: First an article about a Twitter hashtag project, ‘I Had An Abortion,’ in 140 Characters or Less: An Exchange With Steph Herold and Aspen Baker, the hashtag project itself, #ihadanabortion, and these sites: I Had an Abortion. I’m Not Sorry, and 45 Million Voices.

The HIV Story Project is a non-profit, multi-platform story telling/media endeavor and short film compilation about living with HIV/AIDS at the beginning of the 21st Century. Says the site’s About page: “Almost 30 years into one of the world’s most substantial, long term health pandemics, this project brings together individuals living with HIV/AIDS, non-profit social service organizations addressing the disease, and top filmmakers to participate in one of the largest cross-agency and cross-disciplinary efforts around HIV/AIDS the world has ever seen.”

Storytelling tools for social change.

Youth Venture Stories of Change: 24-page downloadable ebook that aims to inspire social change.

Ingredients of Transition: The Role of Storytelling: A kind of a manifesto/how-to of Transition Initiative, which reads, in part:

Weave a thread of storytelling through the work of your Transition initiative. Look backwards as well as forwards, inviting older people to tell stories of how a more localised, lower energy world used to function, ideally by showing people around the actual physical places. Use storytelling in its widest sense, making films, raps, newspaper articles and small ads from the newspapers of the future, cartoons, animations. Hold ‘Future Cabaret’ events where people tell their stories of the future.

Collapsus, transmedia project from SubmarineChannel that combines interactivity, animation, fiction, and documentary. Collapsus looks into the near future and shows you how the imminent energy crisis affects a group of 10 young people, who appear to be caught up in an energy conspiracy. This project illustrates the potential for transmedia storytelling to be deployed for social change.