Why Your Drop in the Bucket Matters

I had the good fortune of listening to Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn speak about their new book, A Path Appears, earlier this week. It is a wonderful book, filled with inspirational stories and persuasive data about how individual people can make a difference in the world. A beautiful quote from Lu Xun opens the book and summarizes it well: “Hope is like a path in the countryside. Originally, there is nothing – but as people walk this way again and again, a path appears.”

Kristof tells a story in the book, that I was lucky to hear him tell in person, about how small actions by individuals can, in fact, make a huge difference in the lives of others, and how a single action often leads to a trajectory of impact enabled by the original act. His story is about a Polish Armenian refugee who was saved from execution in Yugoslavia during WWII because a French diplomat wrote a brief response to this refugee’s letter. Then, that same refugee was sponsored to come to America by a generous-hearted young woman from Portland he met in France after his release.

Those two small acts – drops in the bucket – changed one man’s life forever, and that man was Nicholas Kristof’s father. So indirectly, those small acts have also enabled the work of a Pulitzer Prize winning writer, who, through his writing & speaking, now encourages millions of others to do good in the world.

As Kristof suggests in the book, drops in the bucket matter – that’s how you fill buckets. And it’s by filling these buckets that we’ll create real change.

So when people ask me whether their signatures really matter on Change.org, whether a small action like a signature, can really drive change, my answer to them is always, “Absolutely.” We see ordinary people create extraordinary change every day, and as more people take action more often, we begin to counter feelings of hopelessness, and accelerate the pace of change.

In 2014, we saw more than 5,000 victories on Change.org – nearly one victory per hour. (We call it a victory when the recipient of a petition agrees to do what the petition requests.) These victorious petitions had 44.2 million signatures on them – that’s 44.2 million drops in the bucket. Watch this video to see the incredible changes in 2014 that were driven by those 44.2 million small actions.

I'd love to hear in the comments about small actions people took that helped you, or small things you've done to help others.

What will be your drop in the bucket in 2015?

Jennifer Dulski - @jdulski

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Jennifer Dulski is president and COO of Change.org, the world’s largest platform for social change. With more than 85 million users around the world, Change.org empowers people everywhere to create the change they want to see. If you’d like to read more posts from Jennifer, click the “follow” button at the top of the page to hear more from her on LinkedIn.

Photo credits: flickr - ladydragonflyherworld; Kansas City Star