Asking For Trouble: Ethics, Agenda and Personal Storytelling in a Women's FGM Health Project

Abstract

Abstract This article reflects upon a project that was run in partnership between the author and an Australian health agency in 2010. Nine women's stories, of their personal experiences of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), were told for an educational CD aimed at developing a cultural competency around the issue. I facilitated the women's storytelling and recorded these testimonies. Throughout this process I discovered that the design of the project and the agenda of creating the CD often conflicted with the complex requirements of the participant group. As a result, this project is used as a point of reflection for the ethics of personal storytelling and a discussion regarding the friction between agenda and need.