About Sietske

Story Bridge was founded by me, Sietske Broekhuizen, and made possible with the help of freelance consultants.

I am an NGO communications specialist from the Netherlands with a passion for community inclusion in storytelling. I love teaching and creating supportive learning environments.

Before I started Story Bridge, I worked in the regional office of an NGO where I functioned as a bridge between fundraising offices on all continents and projects in the Middle East. I did that for ten years.

I had just completed my journalism studies when I began working in the non-profit world, and while I had no trouble writing a good story, I felt like I had to completely reinvent my profession while working in a different cultural context. I’ve incorporated all of this reinvention experience into a course for new communicators.

In addition to creating content, I worked with community-based communicators and cooperated with them to deliver usable content. It’s there where I developed my vision on the future of non-profit communications.

The best stories were pitched by those who were in the community every day, the best and most ethical interviews were with interviewees who had built relationships with the community communicators. Community communicators were the only ones able to keep up with the pace of today’s real-time communications demands.

The popularity of localization is on the rise in the NGO world, and in my eyes, that is a good development. Localizing communications is complicated, but having community communicators take the lead in storytelling is a step we can’t skip if we want to empower communities and respect their voices.

Community communicators have the future.

With that said, there is a reason that the telling of stories is, so often, taken over by outsiders. This issue might be why your organization hasn’t yet made the move toward a central role for community communications. As much as outsiders often don’t understand the community context, people in the project community often don’t understand the culture and needs of those who do the fundraising.

This is where Story Bridge comes in. With Story Bridge on their side, community communicators learn about the essential elements for fundraisers while increasing their story-finding and storytelling skills.

With my expertise, I want to speed up the shift toward community communicators taking the lead, without losing existing connections with fundraising audiences. 

Are you ready for the future? My digital door is always open for coffee (or tea).

 Contact me through LinkedIn.