"When our daughter was 15, she got a part time job. Her first paycheck came to $98."
That's how Debbie MacDougall began telling me what happened one afternoon in their small town near Vancouver. Debbie had driven Emily to the bank to deposit that first check in her brand new savings account.
When Emily got to the counter, she said to the teller, "I'd like to keep $50 in cash."
Debbie interrupted her daughter to give her a lecture on the importance of saving.
Emily listened quietly to Debbie's parental advice. Then she said, "Mom, the $50 is for the Christmas Hamper project at school." Emily was in charge of the school's initiative for the nearby women's shelter.
"I think it's important to set an example for other students," said Emily. "The project is worth half my paycheck, don't you think?"
"Tears welled up in my eyes before I could even blink," Debbie told me. "I was astounded. The teller gave me a look I'll never forget."
A few months after hearing this story, I met Emily in the course of my work with the school. She seemed like any other student. Who would have guessed that the scene at the bank would have unfolded as it did?
That's the power of this story: that such a universal desire to make things better, to make a difference, to set an example, was there all along.
When we take time to notice, remember, and tell others about moments such as these, they begin to take up more space in our minds and hearts--and in the systems in which we live. We transcend the downward draw of deficit discourse and crowd out doubt and despair. These images and stories begin to reshape how we view other people and what we believe might be possible for society.
That's plenty, but what might be possible if we assumed from the start that the desire to contribute, to do good, is already there, instead of feeling we have to struggle to convince people to do the best and right thing?
After all, it took no prompting for Emily and her classmates, in their senior year, to raise enough money to start a school in Ecuador. Inspired, the next senior class built one in Sierra Leone, and the next in Kenya.