I've been searching for meaning my whole life, and working to help others and make
a positive impact in the world has brought me an amazing and intense
feeling of fulfillment and purpose. I've met so many others and know of even more
people who feel that exact same way as I do, which is really good news because the
world needs help. But what does it actually take? Have you ever wondered
what it requires to create long lasting, high impact, social change? This video is
for you. Welcome back to another video! My name is Amber Melanie Smith, and I create
videos to help aspiring changemakers with tips and strategies to help you
change the world while living a life of impact and purpose. When I was a kid, I
wondered, how can I, or anyone for that matter, create social change? We grow up
with stories of amazing people at the forefront of creating change - I've always
wanted to know how they did it, and what I could learn from them.
Of course, as I got older, I learned just how complicated this question is.
Throughout high school and college I studied a number of causes, I volunteered
for everything I could get my hands on, and I even convinced my university to
let me create a major to study this question - I called it "social change
leadership." Here's the truth - we can create social change - it's been done and
it's being done all around us today - and one person can play a role in it - but it
takes certain pieces of the puzzle coming together just the right way to
create social change that sticks. So in this video I want to talk about what are
those pieces of the puzzle that come together to create social change that
sticks? And how can one person be a part of effecting change whether you're just
starting out or already in a position to do so? Before I get into those two things
I just want to say this is important stuff. The world has a lot of problems,
but it also has a lot of brilliant people with brilliant minds from all
walks of life who could help solve these problems.
Creating social change that sticks is a big, daunting challenging task but we
have to try. If not you, who? If not now, when?
So let's get into it.
First I'm going to talk about how lasting social change is created. Be sure
to stick around to the end of the video to learn more about what roles you can
play in creating social change. So I recently came across an article in a
Harvard Business Review that I just loved! It was called "Philanthropy needs
more moonshots! Audacious philanthropy!" If you know me at all, you can definitely
see how that would be clickbait for me. I'll leave the link to the article in
the description below if you're interested. The article talks about how
philanthropists and major donors truly want to contribute to long lasting
permanent social change, but that the way social change efforts are currently
being organized and supported it's difficult to really accomplish that. The
article goes on to examine 15 times in global history where humanity was
actually able to do it and how they pulled it off such fascinating stuff so
what did these social change efforts have in common the article identified
four traits that these big successful social change efforts had in common the
first common characteristic is of course that they took time so patience and
stamina are really key here because all of these took at least 20 years and some
even took 50 or 60 years to accomplish also is really important then to keep in
mind that we should be thinking of training the generations after us to
take up the mantle the second characteristic is that they all had some
kind of a government involvement or policy change nonprofits businesses
activists volunteers all these people play a role in creating social change
that lasts but at some point in this process individuals and organizations
came together to convince their nation's leadership to create policies that would
enforce the positive social change that the people of the country wanted keep in
mind though that policy change is not the be-all end-all change doesn't
magically happen when policy changes but making the change part of our law to
hold ourselves accountable as a is a big part of making that change last
the third thing that these movements had in common is that they emphasized
collaboration across the sector's that means bringing together people from
different groups nonprofits businesses civic groups government all of these
groups coordinated to make the social change happen the fourth thing these
efforts have in common they all involved a philanthropist who made a big bet big
long-lasting social change requires a lot of resources so these big social
change efforts involve donors who understood that social change doesn't
happen overnight and even though they knew that they might not see results for
years these philanthropist made contributions that were very large very
deep impact and often repeated contributions to keep the change moving
forward so those are the four characteristics that the top 15 social
change movements across the globe had in common but how did the people as part of
these movements create the social change the examination of these social change
movements showed that each of them did five key things in some way so let's get
into those the first thing these movements did was built a shared
understanding of the problem this essentially means that these movements
took the time to do their research and understand the root causes of a problem
and the factors contributing to a big social issue they took time and used
resources to understand who the problem affects who it benefits and how the
problem is embedded into various aspects of our society one of the 15 social
change movements studied was the reduction of cigarette use and this
effort is a great example of building a shared understanding of the problem to
lay the groundwork to reduce cigarette use multiple organizations had to come
together to fund and develop a scientific and health case proving the
harmfulness of cigarettes then these groups face the problem of sharing that
research with the public and basically making a case against a cheap addictive
socially acceptable substance the solution they came to was framing
cigarette use a harmful addiction and that made it
less socially acceptable the second step the successful social movement efforts
took was setting winnable milestones and creating a compelling message because we
know social change efforts can take decades we've got to set smaller goals
so that we can keep a forward momentum and stay motivated as we move along then
for each of those smaller achievable goals we have to rally people around
it's inspiring story and make sure that it's message is one that people at all
levels from government leaders to a random person on the street can
understand a great example and another case that was studied is the effort to
advance LGBTQ rights in the early 2000s groups were coming together to advance
LGBTQ rights but advancing rights was too vague a goal so these groups
coordinated and established a concrete goal legalizing same-sex marriage
nationwide then to get the ball rolling activists
and nonprofits studied the public response to this goal by devoting some
resources to this market research these groups were able to establish a
universally accepted message that the public could really rally behind love is
love the third action these social movements took was to design approaches
that would work at a massive scale most nonprofits or social change projects are
designed to tackle a smaller problem in a specific community or city and that's
okay but if we're talking about creating this widespread sweeping a permanent
social change it's got to be something that can be scaled efficiently and
effectively across the population to make sure you project our campaign can
scale it has to have a few things it has to be affordable to duplicate it has to
be simple enough for anyone to implement and it has to be an idea that anybody
can be easily trained on to lead on their own without dependence on one
person or a small group of people's highly specialized skills so here's a
really cool example CPR long before any of us learned CPR in our babysitting or
health classes or professional development classes
organizers spent years of research and lots of money making it so simple but
any person could learn it and perform it in the 1970s a program launched to train
as many people as possible in CPR in the first two years it trained a hundred
thousand people and today 18 million Americans know CPR now that's a social
movement the fourth thing these social change efforts did was they drove demand
rather than assume demand long lasting social change efforts respond to real
problems and they provide solutions that people in the community or the world
actually want they don't start with a cool idea for an innovative project or
campaign they start with the need then successful social change efforts invest
heavily in marketing and outreach to test ideas and then raise awareness
about solutions here's an example in the 1960s the Carnegie Corporation and other
philanthropies invested millions of dollars into designing a well researched
effective television program to improve early childhood learning then several
more million dollars were spent on publicity and outreach to spread the
word about this amazing new television program Sesame Street today
Sesame Street reaches a hundred and fifty-six million kids worldwide and
most importantly measurably improves learning outcomes the fifth and final
thing that successful social change efforts did was embracing course
corrections here's the thing ultimately social change is created by human beings
and human human beings make mistakes all whole social change efforts hit
roadblocks and encounter failure at some point but in all of the social change
efforts that succeeded the leaders and supporters of these movements viewed
these roadblocks and failures as a chance to learn and improve not a reason
to give up a great example is school lunches while the issue of child
hunger is still something that changemakers are combating today some
big strides were made in the 1960s back then organizers saw that they were
failing to reach a large number of kids through lunch programs at school
accepting this failure as a chance to improve foundations community members
and the government came together and restructured school lunch guidelines and
approved more funding to the program by 2012 nearly half of all kids attending
public school were receiving the help that they needed through school lunch
programs okay so now that we have a better understanding of how social
change works and how it's made what can we do as everyday people to be a part of
it
as you've heard through all of these examples all long lasting permanent
social change efforts take collaboration and coordination between people and
organizations across all sectors in order to work but that doesn't mean that
you personally can't play a role in making it happen if you're just starting
out the best thing you can do is read and learn all you can about the social
problems that you care about just like the organisation's coming
together at the start of their social change efforts you want to get a deep
understanding of the root causes of the problems you want to take a look at who
is working on this problem already who they are serving what they are doing
what their challenges are where their gaps and service might be and then what
you can do about it think about what you uniquely bring to the table so are you
an amazing public speaker are you a great writer are you good with numbers
are you an artist are you a social butterfly who can rally
lots of friends to do something that's a really valuable skill think about this
and then you want to use your unique skills and talents to plug into the
cause find an organization tackling the problem that you care about and sign up
to volunteer but don't stop there invite your friends to get involved too and
start building up some momentum in the circles that you travel in because it
turns out that according to some research and science magazine you only
need 25 percent of a population to get on board to create a real social
movement so get to inviting your friends and make it happen then build from there
talk to the leadership and the movement and seek to understand what their
biggest challenges are tell the story of the effort to your friends on social
media or to the media ask for honest feedback from people you know about the
message and story of the movement see how it resonates with them then take
that feedback back to the cause if you want to play a big role in creating
social change you've got to invest in learning you've got to start small and
you've got to plug in the people you know with great skills in the roles
where they can be a great fit it takes a critical mass a community to create
social use that sticks but one person can
definitely play a role in sparking a movement helping it grow in their towns
spreading the message and more so tell me how are you working to create social
change I'd really love to hear about it please share in the comments below and
we'll get a conversation going I really hope you liked my video please give it a
thumbs up and don't forget to subscribe because I do weekly videos on all topics
related to social impact social change nonprofits leadership service and more
and once again if you're on Facebook don't hesitate to stop by my group
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changemakers the link is in the description below thank you so much for
watching