Change, told through the people living it
Stories where data unearths human truths
Collaborative narrative craft and story-shaping with NGOs where established systems crack and grassroots power converges. I’m launching this editorial practice with pilot rate projects available through September 15, centring the viewpoint and leadership of each NGO and community.
Change, told through the people living it
Stories where data unearths human truths
Collaborative narrative craft and story-shaping with NGOs where established systems crack and grassroots power converges. I’m launching this editorial practice with pilot rate projects available through September, centring the viewpoint and leadership of each NGO and community.
Awareness sparks, but action sustains. When audiences fracture, fatigue deepens and change outpaces patience, how do you make the vital visceral without loosing its weight?
I’m particularly interested in locally-led NGOs working in peacebuilding with economic and climate dimensions, but I’m open to your ideas.
Data proves. Stories move
Where does your best evidence need its sharpest storytelling: grass roots trust, donor confidence, partnership credibility, or policy influence?
Narratives that earn trust
Like light through a prism, one story refracts to reveal what each audience needs to see.
Illustrate how communities you work with in fragile contexts assert their own identity and power.
Steady donors by following the thread of how local shifts ripple through larger settings.
Fuel inventive policy arguments with stories of environments under pressure and community response.
Connect your team through arcs that map your evidence to living portraits and larger systems being re-shaped.
Services
An editorial practice that evolves with your narratives. From vivid, grounded profiles to collaborative story-shaping and beyond, each work moves your project forward.
The narrative profile
An 800-word portrait weaving together your evidence, methods and the lived reality of community power. Testimonies that help deepen grassroots trust, fuel policy arguments, steady donors and connect teams.
Story co-shaping
Developmental editing, working closely with you.
Co-refine your donor communications, policy briefs, field reports and team materials, crafting nuanced narratives in your voice (up to 1500 words).
Services
An editorial practice that evolves with your narratives. From vivid, grounded profiles to collaborative story-shaping and beyond, each work moves your project forward.
The narrative profile
An 800-word portrait weaving together your evidence, methods and the lived reality of community power. Testimonies that help deepen grassroots trust, fuel policy arguments, steady donors and connect teams.
Story co-shaping
Developmental editing, working closely with you.
Co-refine your donor communications, policy briefs, field reports and team materials, crafting nuanced narratives in your voice (up to 1500 words).
Follow, gather and tell your story
My method
A good story, I believe, begins with curiosity. I’ll follow the thread with you from raw material to living feature.
Influences
My influences span the literary journalists from the 1940s to 1990s, along with writers across genres, all while refining my own approach to digital storytelling.
This means you get methods and portraits that draw audiences into your world like it were their own.
Fact-checking
I examine all work according to the magazine fact-checking model.
Follow, gather and tell your story
My method
A good story, I believe, begins with curiosity. I’ll follow the thread with you from raw material to living feature.
Influences
My influences span the literary journalists from the 1940s to 1990s, along with writers across genres, all while refining my own approach to digital storytelling.
This means you get methods and portraits that draw audiences into your world like it were their own.
Fact-checking
I examine all work according to the magazine fact-checking model.
Project approach
For quality reasons, pilot projects are limited in number and offered on various dates through September 15, with one available for your NGO. Each project is conceived to form the basis of a lasting relationship.
What you receive
- Complete, ready-to-publish feature delivered in 2 weeks
- Shaped for teams, donors, policymakers, and communities
- Structured for your website, grass roots groups, field teams and beyond
- Narrative craft and journalistic methods
- Collaborative edits and final approval
What’s included
The narrative profile
- 800 words
- Up to 2 interviews
- Research review
- First draft
- One round of editing and final approval process
- Fact-checking
Story co-shaping
- 1500 words, approx. 5 double-sided pages
- Up to 2 interviews
- Research review
- One reviewing round and final approval process
- Fact-checking
What I receive
Project profile for my portfolio:
The full work with shared public credit, your feedback and insights for context with confidentiality care.
Work rooted in lived perspective
It’s good to have you here, I’m James. At the stress points, I work with teams to unearth what’s at stake. I follow narrative threads in facts, real people and places that shift perspectives on money, policy and minds.
Close to half-way through life, I followed the need to write. By then, I had been telling and selling stories for years; and I know how they move us.
In my youth, I surfaced Neolithic to early Christian outlines on archaeological sites across Ireland. Then, in Barcelona’s wine trade, I lived themes of farming, culture, tradition, economy, climate and legacy.
I’m from Wales, in Britain, with Irish-Welsh origins. Here, in ancient valleys coal fuelled, willingly or not, one of world history’s most paradoxical systemic changes, the Industrial Revolution. Today, among hill farms and former mining towns, a marginalised but lively people keep a deep sense of belonging and identity.
Languages
I write in British English and American English, with German, Portuguese, Catalan and Spanish.
Work rooted in lived perspective
It’s good to have you here, I’m James. At the stress points, I work with teams to unearth what’s at stake. I follow narrative threads in facts, real people and places that shift perspectives on money, policy and minds.
Close to half-way through life, I followed the need to write. By then, I had been telling and selling stories for years; and I know how they move us.
In my youth, I surfaced Neolithic to early Christian outlines on archaeological sites across Ireland. Then, in Barcelona’s wine trade, I lived themes of farming, culture, tradition, economy, climate and legacy.
I’m from Wales, in Britain, with Irish-Welsh origins. Here, in ancient valleys coal fuelled, willingly or not, one of world history’s most paradoxical systemic changes, the Industrial Revolution. Today, among hill farms and former mining towns, a marginalised but lively people keep a deep sense of belonging and identity.
Languages
I write in British English and American English, with German, Portuguese, Catalan and Spanish.
Your story is ready to break through
Your story is ready to break through
Limited launch projects through September 15. Schedule here or email your project details: js@joswann.com