Change Starts Within

Change is a profound thing. It is difficult, yet beautiful. It is one of the greatest things a person can do. It’s a legacy, passed from person to person, generation to generation.

Everyone wants to be remembered. We as humans wonder at the cycle of life and consider what embellishment we can leave behind on the world in which we walked. We ache and yearn to create a legacy for our names. Will our future generations talk about our achievements? When we are at the threshold between life and death, will we look back with satisfaction?

Legacy: The lasting impression we leave on others - the impact we leave behind. I think it is also how one remembers oneself. I remember being six years old, Easter-egg hunting at a local zoo, when a little girl reached for the same egg I had. With a glance, I noticed that her pastel wicker basket was near empty, whereas mine was teeming with goodies. Without hesitation, I scooped up a handful - as many as my small hand could gather - and promptly dumped them into her basket. There’s the saying, ‘don’t put all your eggs in one basket’. So put some in the basket of your neighbor, and watch how they add to it, and create something grander - fuller, if you will. 

When I first began working with The Ayin Project a little over a year ago, I didn’t plan to be irrevocably captivated. I didn’t plan to throw myself into its mission with all that I am and have to offer. Yet here I am.

Currently, TAP’s WRDC Team in Uganda is creating opportunities that are expanding beyond the classroom walls. The team has been facilitating soap-making seminars at our partner-schools, using items students should have easily-accessible to them. One wonderful unexpected outcome of these seminars has been that students are going home to share their newly learned skills with their families. At one particular school, a student brought the soap-making instructions home, taught her family, and then started her own soap-making business. This family is now generating more income and benefiting both their family, and their community.  Teach one child to make soap, and watch how the community around them flourishes from one new opportunity provided. 

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And so for myself, I try to leave behind this legacy of giving without expecting to receive. Whether it be my time or my resources, I want to spread kindness and hope. The Ayin Project, however, has woven its own legacy through my own, inspiring me to step onto a much larger scale. Instead of looking at what is right before my eyes, TAP taught me to look up - to step higher - and reach farther than I had ever dared before. I realized I have the ability to create genuine, meaningful change in the lives of others far and wide. I have spent this past summer flicking through digital albums of the TAP Ugandan team interacting with the students in schools - watching how they walk alongside each other to create a difference in their community. It’s inspiring in a way that is indescribable. 

When I first began working with The Ayin Project a little over a year ago, I didn’t plan to be irrevocably captivated. I didn’t plan to throw myself into its mission with all that I am and have to offer. Yet here I am. When encountering something with heart in it - something you genuinely want to see succeed - it stops being about give and take. It turns into a question that you ask yourself: What can I do to contribute?

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The journey you take when devoting yourself to something much larger than you is something precious and priceless. I am able to wake up and say that I have learned something about myself and about the world, and that I am better for it. Be the Change is TAP’s motto. However, it is also a lesson. Three words - at first glance so simple - and yet they have sucked me in and implanted themselves behind my eyes at the forefront of my mind. Each person has the capacity to invoke the change they wish to see. So I encourage you, reader, to be the change that encourages growth not only within you, but within the world in which you walk and live and breathe. 

I feel that in most of the articles I have written, I have had a common theme of ‘change’. Change is a profound thing. It is difficult, yet beautiful. It is one of the greatest things a person can do. It’s a legacy, passed from person to person, generation to generation. Everyone has the capacity for it. Make it a goal that with each step you take, you change the world around you. Make it a little bit better - one plastic easter egg at a time.