Natik: We've got a wallop for you!
Greetings! I hope you are enjoying March and the beginning of Spring.
Perhaps you’ve noticed there’s not a fixed format for my second Thursday of the month communication. That's because I simply wake up with a vague idea and start writing.
Therefore, once a month I let my spontaneous reflections soar above the daily duties of strategic planning, funding, communicating, delegating, supervising, and organizing. Today I’ve decided that my letter to you will center on the concept of impact.
First, let’s just acknowledge that the word itself is an overused buzz word in almost all sectors these days.
The thing is, it’s a great word! Most of the thesaurus alternatives are lame by comparison. Wallop comes the closest to conveying the intensity and scope of impact, but the challenge there is to work it into a sentence without sounding utterly foolish.
Now we can switch gears and look at WHY the concept of impact is so important. We mean many things when we use the word. Children’s lives are influenced through learning to love to learn. People’s health is transformed through learning about sanitation, nutrition, and life balance. Lifelong earning capacity is affected by education and entrepreneurial skills.
In turn, individuals whose lives have been influenced, transformed, and affected are able to sway some of the cultural, political, and financial structures that contributed to the poverty and marginalization in their communities in the first place -- for the rest of their lives.
Overall, that’s a walloping great return on investment!
Speaking of investments, one of our strategies for financial sustainability is through our global alliances. That includes coordinating with professors for field experiences that compliment university and graduate level courses.
The organized reciprocal exchanges are complimented by expert cultural, political, and economic orientations. We also schedule free time for individual exploration and adventure because we know that being outside the comfort zone of predictable familiarity often results in paradigm shifts.
The participants take their new perceptions with them when they return home. Unfortunately, unless those students turn into donors, volunteers, and/or board members, we mostly lose track of them. However, our sincerest hope is that their field experiences will also affect them for the rest of their lives.
Therefore, you can imagine how thrilling it was to be contacted by a woman who visited Chiapas with her professor fifteen years ago to inform me that a piece about tht experience was going to be published in Intrepid Times -- and would I give permission to include a link to the Natik website?!
Are you kidding?
Of course I said yes, and then we exchanged several lovely emails.
Even though it’s only one student from one academic trip, I hope you’ll agree that this is a walloping indication of lasting impact. Read the article here.
Hasta la próxima,
🦋☀️🦋 Anita Smart
Executive Director