If you’d like to share a personal experience, please contact us at communications@une-sen.org. It’s always best to plan ahead and, by giving us a head’s up, you’ll be helping us make sure we set aside time for your story. We also want to make sure everyone has an opportunity to participate, so let’s work together to share the mic equally.

Sharing a personal story can be difficult for most of us. If you feel that you’re up to the challenge, we know our members will appreciate your candor. Reading about someone else’s experience is very profound and it has the power to change how we look at the world and each other.

We’ve had a few members share their stories over the past few years. We’ve been lucky to find out more about our racially-visible sisters, our disabled brothers, our transgender sisters, our gay brothers and our laid-off sisters. Read some of these stories to get inspired!

Before you start writing
These types of articles are usually anchored around a specific observance: usually a day to celebrate our diversity or to commemorate a tragic event. Check out our list of observances that can be used to anchor your article. If you’d like to volunteer to share your story, send an email to communications@une-sen.org; we’ll make sure we have a spot for you (and if not, we’ll scratch you down for next year or for a different day altogether!).

The best thing about these types of articles is that they can be written far in advance. That gives us a lot of time to work on it, get it translated and published. These articles should appear on the day of the observance. Ideally, we should start working on these articles a month in advance or more. We may have to say no to proposals for articles that arrive with fewer than 7 days from the publication date… and we don’t like doing that, so it’s all the more reason to get started early!

Sharing your story
Start by jotting down your thoughts; what experiences do you want to share and what would you like our members to know? Are there ways our members can support your cause? Is there some reading material you’d like to suggest?

We prefer that you focus on sharing your personal experience. That way, you’ll be using your own words throughout your article. But let’s say there’s a very insightful statistic that you’d like to share or you read someone else’s take on the subject and you just can’t shake how brilliantly they wrote it. Fear not! We’ll help you source it; all we ask is that you keep track of where you find your information… and keep this to a minimum. Sometimes, it’s just better to include a link to another site rather than have three paragraphs of someone else’s work in your article. No matter what, we’ll help you!

Speaking of brevity, try your best to keep your article under 300 words. Once you’re done, send us your first draft at communications@une-sen.org.

What happens next?
Editing! We’ll go through your article and make a few changes to improve the readability. We try really hard not to substitute our voice for yours, but sometimes a few changes can make a world of difference and really bring your article to life. No matter what, you get to give it your stamp of approval before it goes online. We’re working together!

And then?
Then, your article gets published and you get to bask in the glory of having shared your story with our members! We post your article on our website and promote it through our social media platforms. Finally, remember that it’s always a treat to visit your article every so often because our members will likely leave comments for you to read.