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Foreign hello, and welcome to another episode of Migrant Odyssey. I'm Stephen Barden. Thank you, as ever, for your support. This podcast enables people to tell and remember their stories, the stories they've inherited, those they experience now, and those that help them create their future. So what is a story? What is one's life story? That's something I've been thinking about a lot in the last few weeks. And what's the difference between telling one's story, one's own story, and propagandizing? After all, they both involve crafting a narrative. They're both an attempt at creating a coherent chronicle of of one's history. Here's the difference. Propaganda is a monologue. Personal life stories have to be a dialogue. Propaganda, from the Latin propagare to propagate is, according to Merriam Webster, the spreading of ideas, information or rumor for the purpose of helping or injuring an institution, a cause or a person. It's pushing out a narrative, true or false, most often a combination of both. To do what? To exclusively help or injure one policy, institution, person, ideology, and so on. It's a narrative that has little or no sympathy for any other players. The image that it evokes for me is diverting a river to irrigate my farm, even though I know it'll leave yours without water, and then persuading you that drought is very good for you. Propaganda is a monologue to promote, disseminate, propagate singular interests over others. Storytelling, personal and communal, even mythology, is a dialogue. It can be nothing less. In order for me to tell my story, I have to tell it to myself first. And in order to do that, I have to acknowledge that I am not in a vacuum, that there are people and places that I encounter and who influence me all the time. We create our own story, not just from our own direct path, but also from those of our parents and grandparents, where we came from, who are the people who loved us or didn't? Who were the rogues and heroes in our own families, neighborhoods and communities? We are not just what we think of as our own direct experiences, but we are also the feelings, emotions and thoughts that our people, those in our community, our family, our colleagues, our competitors and rivals, even those feelings and emotions that they evoke in us when they tell us their experiences and their stories. Like it or not, however free or independent we think we are, what we absorb from those around us is woven into the way we view the world and ourselves. We are in constant dialogue with our world. In telling our story only to ourselves, we may of course, border on propagandizing, crafting ourselves as victims or victors. But in telling our story to our communities, to those with a sympathetic, dare I say, loving earth, the less we feel we have to. Why would I need to defend myself against a loving listener? And in asking our community to contribute their own stories, or indeed to contribute to our stories, we are confirmed as valued, cherished human beings. We belong. If you can see how important this is to you, if you are in a settled, secure society, think how important it is to those who have been displaced, uprooted, unwanted and dehumanized to be affirmed as valued and beloved. My guest today is Shams. She is one of the founders of Waves to Home, a movement that knows the healing that lies in creating communities no longer in the town, country, or culture or language from which people have been torn, but linking them globally. And while you hear her tell her story, have a listen to how much emphasis she places on the people around her, her family, her friends and her colleagues, her community. Shams, welcome to the program. Thank you for being here. Delighted to talk to you.