In graduation speeches and other motivational speeches for young people, many speakers talk about the need to find your passion. One of my favorite quotes is, “Don’t ask yourself what the world needs: Ask yourself what makes you come alive. And then go and do that, because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” from Howard Thurman. I completely agree with this need to find your passion and pursue it. Whether that’s building libraries, writing novels, designing houses, advocating as a politician, each one of us can find our passion. Yet I think the real magic, the real change comes when you find someone else who shares that passion with you. When two or more people come together over a shared passion is when real sustainable changes can happen.
Recently we completed a mentorship project for girls in the upper level of secondary school. (Think junior and senior in High School). We called the project “Let Girls Work,” as a spin off of Michelle Obama’s Initiative “Let Girls Learn.” The idea was to match rural female students with Rwandan professionals in their regional town or the capital city who could be their mentor and they could job shadow for a day. The goal was by doing so the girls would begin to think about careers they could do outside of their villages or skills they could take back to their communities. The result was incredible. One of my students, Perpetue, who is interested in music and journalism, was matched with a local radio speaker. They spent a day together learning all about the radio and journalism. At the end Perpetue wanted to learn more and will apply to do an internship at the radio after she finishes school. Later in Kigali, students met women who were authors, lawyers, businesswomen, educators, and doctors. The inspiration did not come from us American Volunteers, but from a Rwandan woman who shared the same passion as the student. The shared passion between the two led to the most profound impact on the student. One student even said that her mentor, “inspired me and she told me that I can change the whole world.”
Sharing a passion not only helps each individual further their own goals, but this in turn benefits the entire community or country. Maybe this seems obvious. After all where would Lewis be without Clark? Where would Martin Luther King Jr. be without all of his supporters? We need each other for sustainable change in our world. I think the Peace Corps has whole heartedly implemented this principle. Every project must involve at least one if not multiple community counterparts and a significant community contribution. One Volunteer can’t do a project alone and expect anyone to benefit from it. One person’s passion isn’t enough to change the world, but the more people who come together in their passion can be.
Back to the story of the library, after Christophe and I decided to go for it, the first thing we decided we needed was a committee of people to help make decisions for the library. Christophe’s made announcements in all the local churches and a group of community members got together to elect a committee. The committee has since made all major decisions for the library. When the library will be open, what books will we buy for the library, what programs do we want to implement, how will we make it sustainable. Their meetings often last for several hours, with each member contributing their own ideas for each decision point. They all spent time volunteering at the library so that it would remain open for the public. A year later we now have a part-time library worker and a small library full of books. Together we ran a training of teachers and community leaders about the library and the importance of reading. It’s one of only about 100 community libraries in the country. Without this group of passionate and dedicated people, it would just be a locked room full of books, not an organization dedicated to the capacity building of the entire community.
I feel like I have been lucky during my second year in Peace Corps to work on projects that I am so intensely passionate about. The projects could have never been completed without the dozens of people and organization that dedicated their time, money, and support. With our shared passion for gender equality and literacy, we’ve made a small difference. And slow by slow, as Rwandans say, change will happen.