Elisa Morgan, ONE mom blogger and publisher of FullFill Magazine, shares a brilliant equation with our ONE members.
I care, I really do, about poverty and injustice and HIV/AIDS and kids dying unnecessarily from not being vaccinated from malaria and other diseases. Really, I care.
And yet weighed down by the everyday responsibilities of getting food on my own table and shuttling kids around and wiping bottoms and noses and counter tops -– hopefully not in that order -– I wonder: How can I REALLY make a difference?
I’m not a zillionaire or a world health expert. I’m not a supermodel or a celebrity with my own help-the-world-a-thon. I’m a woman. A wife. A mom. Oh, and a grandmom. I’m old, too. I live in the trenches, in the daily, doing life the best I can.
What difference could I possibly make? This has been my stance for oh-so-very-many-years.
Until I began to look at the whole issue of making a difference as a math problem. You know: “Me” plus “you” equals “we.” If I do one thing -– not even a giant thing, but maybe just the thing right in front of me — and then you do one thing, then together we might make a dent in the world of needs around us. “Me” plus “you” equals “we.”
I might agree to dog-sit my son’s 97-pound rottweiler.
You might sit with a friend who’s just learned that her teenage daughter is pregnant. And just listen.
We might click the button on ONE’s website and register support for funding of two new vaccines against pneumonia and diarrhea in order to save 4 million kids lives in 5 years.
Like this little girl in the photo below. She is a pneumonia patient at Siaya District Hospital in Kisumu, Kenya.
It’s easy to think that I can’t make a difference because I’m just me. But I can. And so can you. “Me” plus “you” equals “we.” I’ve never been very good at math. Until now, that is. Better late than never.
Photo courtesy of Morgana Wingard