My grandmother’s recipe for butter tarts is a secret treasure worth sharing.  Before Christmas she would spend at least a day and a lot of lard to offer her gifts of love.  If you are a pastry lover, the delicious blends of brown sugar, butter, vanilla, and raisins over a not-too-thick, perfectly flakey crust in a personalized serving is to die for!

But, I don’t have the recipe.  I don’t know how to reproduce it. No one can do it like my grandma did.  I wish she would have taught me.

My grandma had a unique, melt-in-your mouth perspective on butter tarts.

Changemaking is just like sharing your secret recipe.  Your passions combined with your life experiences, your place on the planet combined with your sweetness, offer something no one else can offer.

Changemaking is sharing your unique perspective with the world.

It begins with you.

Then, it seeks out the devastated, betrayed, or battered places on the planet or on your street.  You begin by adding your ingredients; you kneed and roll.  It is a process of creating. Changemaking is rarely microwaveable.  It requires time and attention.

Changemaking is moving devastated things to thriving.

You spend the time and your life begins to tell a story.  Then, if you’re really blessed, it combines with the stories of others. We all pull together.  Schools, communities, and families join hearts and hands to work.

Changemaking is filled with courageous, loyal, and generous expressions of community.

This is how we become changemakers.  This is how we grow changemakers.  We provide students with the opportunities to see and know they are changemakers in our global community.

My Learn Forward changemaking journey with Niteo Africa and Willowstone Academy continue this month as I attend the international consortium “Transforming Communities through Education.”  It is an opportunity to share our secret recipe for education more broadly with the world.

Please read more from my colleague and fellow blogger, Heather Sandager, on our changemaking journey.

Journal Questions:

• What is the special and unique gift you have to share with the world?
• How are you sharing it?
• What is your child’s special and unique gift?
• How can he/she share it?

May you be blessed with new opportunities this month on your own unique changemaking journey!

For the sake of the children,

Karine

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