Page 1 of 2 

 Storytelling : Using Empathy to Redesign Public Services 

 By Tarek Nady 

 Bangladesh is a small country with a very large population . More than 40 % of the people are 

 engaged in agriculture and located in faraway rural locations . They are mostly wage earners or 

 smallholder farmers and for their livelihood they need to work every day . And like any other 

 developing country Bangladesh has quite slow and inefficient public services . These public 

 services are mostly distributed from the district cities . And transportation systems are expensive 

 and in most of the cases roads are also not in very good condition . So for rural population it is 

 very difficult to avail necessary public services . The opportunity costs are very high along with the 

 actual costs due to travel , corruption etc . Then again the bureaucratic processes and 

 administrative mechanisms were based on the system designed by the British back in the 

 nineteenth century . And the lack of empathy among the public officials and lack of understanding 

 about the challenges faced by the poor rural population to avail the basic public services are 

 clearly evident . From my project I was assigned to develop a pilot project involving the public 

 officials to deliver decentralized services for the rural population ; a mechanism what would reduce 

 the number of visits required to a public office to avail a service . The first step was to make the 

 public service officials empathetic and agreeing in engaging in the pilot . The challenge was to 

 make the public service officials of the pilot project area to feel empathetic towards the service 

 recipients of rural areas , to understand the implications in the lives of the people who come to 

 take service . The lack of empathy among the public officials were the major challenge in 

 redesigning the service delivery processes . 

 The idea was to make the public officials feel the complications , costs and the difficulties of the 

 people of remote rural areas who sometimes needs to spend one full day of travel just to collect 

 a form . So in terms of tool selection I thought that storytelling would be the most suitable tool . 

 Because I felt that the challenge has certain elements of emotion and compassion because the 

 issues needed to touch the hearts of the people whose decisions could make a difference in the 

 lives of many . I did think of other tools , but I very strongly felt that storytelling would be appropriate 

 as I wanted to create a personal connection for the public officials . 

 I organized a workshop with the public service officials of the pilot area . Before the workshop I 

 collected some videos of interviews of the rural people who faced serious difficulties in availing 

 public services and did a survey to find out some statistical analysis on average total cost ( actual 

 costs added with opportunity costs ) of availing a service . Once all this information was ready I 

 Page 2 of 2 

 decided to develop a story taking bits and pieces from the information collected . I central character 

 of the story is a farmer , Rahim who is in his late forties , he needed to go to the district 

 administration office to collect a form to claim the irrigation subsidy . The challenge was he needed 

 to work in the field because the field needed clearing and at the same time he needed to pay the 

 examination fee for her daughter . He also needed to pay some bribe for the form along with the 

 costs of travelling to the district city , there were expenses for food also . Now the cost implication 

 for Rahim was huge as he needed to hire someone for clearing the field , he needed to travel to 

 the office and come back . To meet the expenses Rahim had to take money out of his savings . 

 This is not even the half of the challenge ! ! Because after filling up the form , getting the right 

 signatures he again needed to go back to the office to submit the form and finally a third time to 

 get the subsidy . Eventually he spent more than half of the subsidy amount he was supposed to 

 receive , in the process . This scenario keeps repeating every year and poor farmers like Rahim 

 keeps being underserved by the faulty system . They also become more and more vulnerable 

 because of almost no savings . I used some visuals for the storytelling and to portray the 

 helplessness of the rural population . The aim of the storytelling was to make the public officials 

 empathetic first , then engage them in discussing different aspects of the challenges for the service 

 recipients and the service providers . 

 The story followed by videos & survey findings were shared at the beginning of the workshop . 

 After that the public service officials were engaged to identify the reasons behind such a system . 

 At this point some interesting insights came up . To be more specific the policies , the service 

 delivery rules , documentations requirement , legal requirements for signatures , payment for 

 services , audit requirements , brokers and other many aspects that created the persisting scenario 

 of depriving the service seekers . It was identified that with the advancement of the technology 

 there were many possibilities opened up to make service processes simpler , to make access 

 easier , faster and cheaper . However due to many complex reasons such initiatives were not being 

 undertaken satisfactorily . 

 The workshop achieved its target of making the public service officials more empathetic , more 

 understanding of the challenges faced by the rural people and the prices they pay and engaging 

 the to identify the issues with the current service delivery model . The videos supported the story 

 and created the right environment for the discussion . Next time I would like to bring a real person 

 who faced the challenges in availing the public service . Because I feel interacting with someone 

 who faces such challenges on a regular basis , would be even more impactful for the public service 

 officials . 


EMAIL: 
ID_NUM: 
NAME_STUDENT: Tarek Nady
PHONE_NUM: 
STREET_ADDRESS: 
URL_PERSONAL: 
USERNAME: 

### Task: You are a PII (Personal Identity Information) Detection. Given a essays written by students, you have to identify ONLY the following:
NAME_STUDENT - The full or partial name of a student that is not necessarily the author of the essay. This excludes instructors, authors, and other person names.
EMAIL - A student’s email address.
USERNAME - A student's username on any platform.
ID_NUM - A number or sequence of characters that could be used to identify a student, such as a student ID or a social security number.
PHONE_NUM - A phone number associated with a student.
URL_PERSONAL - A URL that might be used to identify a student.
STREET_ADDRESS - A full or partial street address that is associated with the student, such as their home address.
### Input: Page 1 of 2 

 Storytelling : Using Empathy to Redesign Public Services 

 By Tarek Nady 

 Bangladesh is a small country with a very large population . More than 40 % of the people are 

 engaged in agriculture and located in faraway rural locations . They are mostly wage earners or 

 smallholder farmers and for their livelihood they need to work every day . And like any other 

 developing country Bangladesh has quite slow and inefficient public services . These public 

 services are mostly distributed from the district cities . And transportation systems are expensive 

 and in most of the cases roads are also not in very good condition . So for rural population it is 

 very difficult to avail necessary public services . The opportunity costs are very high along with the 

 actual costs due to travel , corruption etc . Then again the bureaucratic processes and 

 administrative mechanisms were based on the system designed by the British back in the 

 nineteenth century . And the lack of empathy among the public officials and lack of understanding 

 about the challenges faced by the poor rural population to avail the basic public services are 

 clearly evident . From my project I was assigned to develop a pilot project involving the public 

 officials to deliver decentralized services for the rural population ; a mechanism what would reduce 

 the number of visits required to a public office to avail a service . The first step was to make the 

 public service officials empathetic and agreeing in engaging in the pilot . The challenge was to 

 make the public service officials of the pilot project area to feel empathetic towards the service 

 recipients of rural areas , to understand the implications in the lives of the people who come to 

 take service . The lack of empathy among the public officials were the major challenge in 

 redesigning the service delivery processes . 

 The idea was to make the public officials feel the complications , costs and the difficulties of the 

 people of remote rural areas who sometimes needs to spend one full day of travel just to collect 

 a form . So in terms of tool selection I thought that storytelling would be the most suitable tool . 

 Because I felt that the challenge has certain elements of emotion and compassion because the 

 issues needed to touch the hearts of the people whose decisions could make a difference in the 

 lives of many . I did think of other tools , but I very strongly felt that storytelling would be appropriate 

 as I wanted to create a personal connection for the public officials . 

 I organized a workshop with the public service officials of the pilot area . Before the workshop I 

 collected some videos of interviews of the rural people who faced serious difficulties in availing 

 public services and did a survey to find out some statistical analysis on average total cost ( actual 

 costs added with opportunity costs ) of availing a service . Once all this information was ready I 

 Page 2 of 2 

 decided to develop a story taking bits and pieces from the information collected . I central character 

 of the story is a farmer , Rahim who is in his late forties , he needed to go to the district 

 administration office to collect a form to claim the irrigation subsidy . The challenge was he needed 

 to work in the field because the field needed clearing and at the same time he needed to pay the 

 examination fee for her daughter . He also needed to pay some bribe for the form along with the 

 costs of travelling to the district city , there were expenses for food also . Now the cost implication 

 for Rahim was huge as he needed to hire someone for clearing the field , he needed to travel to 

 the office and come back . To meet the expenses Rahim had to take money out of his savings . 

 This is not even the half of the challenge ! ! Because after filling up the form , getting the right 

 signatures he again needed to go back to the office to submit the form and finally a third time to 

 get the subsidy . Eventually he spent more than half of the subsidy amount he was supposed to 

 receive , in the process . This scenario keeps repeating every year and poor farmers like Rahim 

 keeps being underserved by the faulty system . They also become more and more vulnerable 

 because of almost no savings . I used some visuals for the storytelling and to portray the 

 helplessness of the rural population . The aim of the storytelling was to make the public officials 

 empathetic first , then engage them in discussing different aspects of the challenges for the service 

 recipients and the service providers . 

 The story followed by videos & survey findings were shared at the beginning of the workshop . 

 After that the public service officials were engaged to identify the reasons behind such a system . 

 At this point some interesting insights came up . To be more specific the policies , the service 

 delivery rules , documentations requirement , legal requirements for signatures , payment for 

 services , audit requirements , brokers and other many aspects that created the persisting scenario 

 of depriving the service seekers . It was identified that with the advancement of the technology 

 there were many possibilities opened up to make service processes simpler , to make access 

 easier , faster and cheaper . However due to many complex reasons such initiatives were not being 

 undertaken satisfactorily . 

 The workshop achieved its target of making the public service officials more empathetic , more 

 understanding of the challenges faced by the rural people and the prices they pay and engaging 

 the to identify the issues with the current service delivery model . The videos supported the story 

 and created the right environment for the discussion . Next time I would like to bring a real person 

 who faced the challenges in availing the public service . Because I feel interacting with someone 

 who faces such challenges on a regular basis , would be even more impactful for the public service 

 officials .
### Output: 