Choosing to Hatch the Egg

 

“We had to step out of our silos, fears, and comfort zones all at the same time…”

 

Thank you Jeff, Anastasiya, Tatiana, and Christine for joining us yesterday!

In 2022, we wondered if Storypal is not needed in the world. We compared ourselves a lot with other online platforms where students could be spending their valuable time. We also wondered if it WAS needed, then if we can “make it” with our current technical capacity and financial situation. We even considered killing the server.

However, the idea of killing the server helped us cut out all the fat and face the naked value that we see Storypal started to deliver: the one-on-one international friendships for students. We concluded we cannot kill the server despite the sustainability uncertainty as of now because we may be a chapter or two away from something super exciting. We also realized that Storypal is NOT about educating students on diverse cultures or English as an end goal. Instead, Storypal is about helping students have real-life experiences of building personal relationships with people from diverse backgrounds. The future projection of Storypal will be also more clear and more definite as a ruffle effect of a clearer why.

In other words, we are helping teachers who are teaching diverse cultures or English as one of their tools but our main focus must be on facilitating the one-on-one relationship-building for the students in educational contexts. This clarification recharged us and opened our hearts to channel our energy to thinking about how we could improve and deliver better. One thing we saw lacking was regular interaction with members. We had to step out of our silos, fears, and comfort zones all at the same time. We wanted to talk to more people, especially our current and potential Storypal members.

So we started our first experiment, casual happy hours with guests!

Upcoming Storypal happy hours will be virtual meet-up venues for connecting with like-minded educators and students in and out of Storypal. Interested in joining one of our future happy hours? Sign up here to get a notification.