Story-Telling Project for Early-childhood Parenting Support (STEPS) Project

STEPS uses storytelling as an approach for addressing the social, physical, intellectual, cultural, emotional, and spiritual needs of Caribbean children. STEPS defines storytelling as "a living document". It is an act of sharing which incorporates the expressive arts to communicate, entertain, educate and enlighten.

Partnership is envisioned as a crucial component of programme development and sustainability. As lead agency, Arts-in-Action will coordinate and support local projects by facilitating local proposal development, building local capacity, and conducting training workshops, as well as organising materials for dissemination and exchange. The affiliation that the agencies in Belize, Cayman Islands, Guyana and Suriname share with their respective government ministries and early childhood caregivers, coupled with Arts-in-Action's work in schools and communities in the field of educative theatre (including story-theatre), is thought to create an effective mix of administrative and creative scope and stakeholder reach. These connections will, it is hoped, be fruitful in creating additional linkages between participating local agencies and stakeholders, from which continuities and extensions for the project can be spawned.

Interpersonal, face-to-face communication is the key means of building the capacity for the use of storytelling as a development tool. Specifically, the project is being implemented in 3 phases:

1. The completion of local proposals (proposal training workshops) - representatives of the lead organisations engaged in proposal building workshops, and a working group was formed for the purpose of creating the Training Manual for the Story-telling kit (this group met in Trinidad, and continues to have teleconferences on a weekly basis and to communicate via email). Finally, two synergetic workshops were completed: The first was a collaboration with The Regional Radio Project (RRP), and was held in Toco, Trinidad, and the second was carried out with the Roving Caregivers Project (RCP) in Dominica.
2. Training (local/regional story building/telling workshops)
3. Implementation and evaluation of local projects - Each territory has been given the mandate to create individual projects that will facilitate the needs of children, parents, caregivers, and ECD practitioners. The projects are designed specifically and uniquely for that particular territory, utilising storytelling as the primary medium.

Early Childhood Development.

Created in 1994, Arts-in-Action ventures out into communities, schools and places of employment, with the primary mandate of educating people through indigenous forms of street theatre, using folk forms such as storytelling and carnival and Caribbean music. Through this work, the importance of storytelling, in particular, came to the forefront is the seed of the Caribbean identity and ideology. "Storytelling has, for time immemorial been a vital part of our historical development and has always had a place in the education of the Caribbean people."