The podcast to restore your faith in humanity.
By Yampier Aguiar Durañona
You might think that writing about your own podcast is an easy homework. Well, no it isn’t. At least not for me. When I was searching a catchy slogan for the podcast “Stick Your Neck Out!”, the Podcast of the Giraffe Heroes Foundation, I was looking for something that sounded good, inspires and described the initial idea of the podcast – today, with more than 35 episodes published and many more in production, I am convinced that the one I found is unbeatable: “The podcast to restore your faith in humanity” does exactly that.
I’ve interviewed Giraffe Heroes, kanthari Alumni and Friends of Giraffes. Every single one of them has remarkable stories. In fact, some listeners described getting “goosebumps” when listening to these stories and reflecting on my guests’ lives and work. Well, me too. It’s a funny thing, getting goosebumps. Sometimes you get them in a positive way, sometimes the other way around. But one thing I know for sure, talking to these people, researching about them, getting to know them in this very personal way, has made me recover, restore, my faith in humanity. And I hope these inspiring talks can restore the faith in humanity of those who listen to it too. Helping hands, altruism and kindness are all around!
Let me tell you our story, the story of this podcast. The Giraffe Heroes Project is soon to become 40 years old. Its mission is to commend and support personalities sticking their necks out and fighting for the social issues that matter: justice, freedom, our environment… For three years the Giraffe Heroes Foundation (GHF), mostly devoted to European Giraffes who stick their necks out for the common good, has been active from Basel.
I approached the GHF founder with the idea of having a podcast. Another storytelling platform to share the stories of these astonishing people called Giraffe Heroes. The stories also of complex and extensive issues, the stories of individuals whose lives exemplify the challenges of our times. And so it began.
At first there were only Giraffes. But while listening to our episode with Giraffe Hero Sabriye Tenberken, the GHF founder realized that the kantharis are doing something in a principal way similar to what he and his team at the foundation aim at doing. He wrote, and I quote: “ (…)you went into it from the root: you get the Giraffes before they even have properly awoken to themselves – and then help them to become what is hidden inside them. And this of course they will always remember and thus keep a relation and interaction with the source from where they have started out on their mature journey(…)”. So we went from telling only the stories of the Giraffe Heroes to also portraying kanthari Alumni.
“In what they are doing, the kantharis are the perfect example of and perfect match for the Giraffe-Heroes Project itself“ – reads a blog entry at “Staying the Course”, the blog of one of our most devoted friends. And so it is indeed.
kantharis, strong people who have overcome adversity and are equipped with the tools necessary to run their own organisations for social changes. The goal is to achieve (social) change from within – thus it’s obvious, that the aim is to create an impact in their own communities. Rather than just subsidising, it is an exchange of experiences and skills, a fruitful programme with a win-win situation for everyone who’s participating. Listening to the podcast is part of participating as well – to get active afterwards, to get out of the own comfort zone – that is a choice everyone has to make on their own.
Regardless of the circumstances in which they find themselves in the course of their lives, these Giraffes, kantharis, and friends of them are playing a part, a big one, in spreading positivity and making our world overcome its challenges. Having created this platform, this podcast reminds me of why I became a journalist. I wanted to drive belief and behavioural change. Listening to these stories, talking to these people is a confirmation that this podcast can’t have a different slogan.
But not everything is sweets and candies. It can be challenging doing a podcast. To produce an Interview Podcast like this one, you need at least two persons. Two persons sitting in different parts of the world, having different problems and different possibilities. Some of the programs you must work with, interviewing from a distance, are not super accessible. Many of the people trying to make this world a better place are people with disabilities – at least according to how the established, privileged society would describe it.
Most of my guests are people living in so called developing countries. Sometimes they have no electricity, insufficient internet, or really old equipment. Not all of them have a microphone, even less an audio interface to guarantee a good sound quality. For many of them this is not a priority. Luckily, having grown up in Cuba, these problems are very familiar to me: that there are more urgent problems than recording a podcast to widen your reach, that time doesn’t always seem so valuable, that mentality differs….
I’m conscious of how privileged the situation I find myself in right now is – yet I sometimes wish I could really do the recordings sitting in the same room – or at least having a really good connection to be able to transmit what it actually needs to have a really good audio – and what benefit that gives us.
Anyway – knowing, researching, and talking to people in this podcast was, and it still is, an absolutely positive experience. Especially during times when the corona pandemic has taken over media and made distances worldwide noticeably real again. Through the talks though I could get a close impression on what all these social change makers are up to.
I’m really happy, every Tuesday, to make more people know about these truly important, truly honest and real social changes which are being created. In my head there is a map already where to go next – and how to produce more detailed, more visionary portraits of all those individuals, creating valuable information about their projects – making people know about those hands-on activists for social change who don’t fear to take on the challenge.
I truly feel impact and inspiration to go and visit the campus, meeting face to face
with Sabriye, with Paul, the team, and the current round of kantharis. I’d love to accompany them and to be able to be part of exchanging experience and information from the very first beginning and to share my knowledge about what to put in the backpack of each new kanthari regarding knowledge and tools for how to handle media, how to handle a homepage, online presence, conducting interviews… – letting my experiences from the past months be part of advising others on how to cope with the obstacles that were recurring but are easy to be taken care of…
Meanwhile, I’m going on producing the podcast, curious on what comes next, hopeful, to be able to overcome technical hurdles and physical distance – and, fingers crossed, we’ll make it to Kerala on time to dive into the social change spirit personally.
Sharing this space with the Giraffe Heroes, with the Friends and with the kantharis, has been a roller coaster of feelings. Every episode comes and goes with increasing my optimism. I’ve had guests who motivated me to do good. Others have encouraged me to cope with my own shortcomings. Some remind me to be the change I wish to see. I’ve been able to look deeper at other’s emotions and motivations, to understand them, to listen, to hope, to give back, to heal.
Listen to this podcast, and your faith in humanity will be restored!
http://www.giraffe-heroes.eu/en/stick-your-neck-out/