Change the world. A phrase we might associate with the fancy of youth, a bold declaration we make before life has had its way with us. We often envision it as a thunderous event or a public triumph.
But I have learned that while opportunities to truly shift things are very real, they rarely arrive with a shout; they appear as a quiet tap on the shoulder, often in the midst of our own undoing—just as my first real opportunity did. And what’s more, that chance to make a difference may not look like a global movement, but rather a positive shift in your own small slice of the universe, because every positive change adds up.
[William Blake] knew what we all eventually realize, if we are awake and courageous enough: that the best way—and the only effective way—to complain about the way things are is to make new and better things, untested and unexampled things, things that spring from the gravity of creative conviction and drag the status quo like a tide toward some new horizon. —Maria Popova
The secret of change is to focus all of your energy not on fighting the old, but on building the new.—Socrates
My Invitation to Change the World
In the spring of 1992, I got on a plane at London’s Heathrow Airport, bound for America.
My two years living in London and my four-year relationship with a man I loved deeply were ending, as was my five-year journey in the publishing industry.
Heartbroken and disillusioned, I watched tiny, diagonal lines of rain streak across the plane window as we taxied to the runway.
Once we climbed a few thousand feet, I lost sight of London in the clouds. For hours, I kept my gaze on the nothingness that engulfed me. By the time we landed, I was numb, but clear.
I would embrace starting over.
A few months later, I thought perhaps I’d like to go back to school and become a teacher. To test my hunch, I volunteered at the local high school, teaching creative writing.
On day one, I was shocked.
I was there to teach avant-garde writing skills, and what I discovered was that a solid 40-50% of the class was not on grade level for reading or writing. I immediately modified my plans and sought books and teaching materials from the literacy council in the town 40 minutes away.
The director of the council was eager to help me. She loaded me up with what she called “high/low” books (high interest, low reading level) and literacy manuals. As I walked the pile to my car, she said, “You know, Highlands needs a literacy council.”
In the moment, I barely registered what she said. I nodded and thanked her again.
I began working with the students while teaching myself how to teach literacy skills. I embraced the vast frontier of everything I did not yet know. The challenge electrified me and reignited my desire to create.
Every time I taught, I watched faces light up. Shoulders lift. A sense of possibility and agency return.
I was hooked.
But I instinctively knew I could not work inside the school system and change the world—or even just this one community—in the way these students deserved. The environment just wasn’t for me, and I would wither and die within it. I was after something that was entrepreneurial, agile, innovative.
I also knew that the kids who needed the most help needed one-on-one instruction (something that was not feasible in a regular classroom).
I needed to build something outside of the standard system.
And, so, in the spring of 1993, with seed money from the local Rotary Club, I created the Literacy Council of Highlands, a nonprofit organization. Similar to my dearth of literacy education knowledge, I knew nothing about how to start up and run a nonprofit.
Not long after a historic blizzard had rendered the town a standstill for over a week, I sat on the living room floor of my lake cabin with three friends and my sister, and we held our first board meeting.
Over the following months, I learned the art of fundraising, grant writing, volunteer recruitment and training, and nonprofit leadership. I researched all the ways children and adults learn and created a toolbox of methods.
I discovered that most of the children who had been labeled with learning disabilities simply learned differently.
In many cases, their brains interpreted the world from a whole-to-part perspective rather than from a part-to-whole perspective. This meant learning how to read through phonics (a part-to-whole method) was frustrating and confusing. But once they knew the whole (e.g., c-a-t is cat), I could teach them the component sounds that comprised the whole.
We moved our teaching venue from the basement of a local church to the former Highlands-Cashiers Hospital building, which was just up the hill from the school. It was a perfect location. Kids could walk up the hill after school and come for tutoring where dozens of the most lovely humans were waiting to dote on, love, and teach.
Kids began rocketing upward through grade levels. Confidence soared. I’d watch students of all ages run up the hill and into the building. They clutched test papers emblazed with 90s and 100s in hand and yelled for me in the hallway: “Miss deVille! Miss deVille! LOOK!!!”
The Literacy Council of Highlands is still thriving today. 33 years later, the organization I sometimes refer to as my firstborn has taught thousands upon thousands of kids and adults—everything from reading and writing to math and science to English as a Second Language, and preparing for and passing the GED.
Thousands upon thousands of hours of devotion from volunteers and staff. We didn’t set out to be heroes, yet we managed to change the world for the families in our community, and certainly, the experience changed my own life forever.
Listen for Your Invitation to Change the World
Is there something you are craving to create? A specific way you want to change the world using your unique gifts?
When you map it out and get your ideas down on paper, be honest about the elements of the idea that feel confining/restrictive. How do you best work? How do you best create? What conditions need to be present?
What might you build outside the status quo that not only sends your spirit to the stratosphere, but also calls others to a new horizon? That might change the world, even just one small part of it, for the better?
Take author and researcher Jim Collins’ advice: create a pocket of greatness. Create a new solution that heals your heart and that of those you are desperate to serve. Let what you love bring clarity to the how, where, when, and who.
