Impact: The Effect Of The Mark

                                             

For the last two years I have tried to quantify impact. How do we adequately measure, define, and communicate the impact, the mark, that one person has on another? 

This question permeates my thoughts because my day to day, my working hours are encompassed in this imperative yet simple question. How can Authentically Me impact Authentically You?                                                      

In 2011, Fear 2 Freedom began. Born out of compassion and energized to create a tangible difference in the lives of those wounded by sexual and physical violence, Fear 2 Freedom's niche is creating an uplifting forum for "one person to one person impact". 

By partnering universities, hospitals, and communities to build essential after-care kits for victims of violence, Fear 2 Freedom (F2F) inspires others to be the solution, to offer hope and love in someone else's moment of great trauma. F2F kits are used by Forensic Nurses within hospitals, non-profits, after-care homes, and international organizations to uplift, encourage, comfort, and support.  For more information, please check us out at fear2freedom.org. 

  

For the last two years my ultimate purpose within F2F was to help support, to nurture, and to accomplish this very real, this very incredible human exchange of love and hope. Yet how can I quantify in words what it means to tangibly impact the life of another person? How can I tell the story of the countless marks made on other's lives? How can I get the "buy-in"? 

The simple and honest answer is that impact is not quantifiable. Sure, I can do a survey of participants, I can tell you how many kits are completed a year, how many institutional partners are out there...but impact is not measured by these programmed facts. 

Impact is measured within an exchange. Impact is measured across a lifespan of development. Impact in it's original nature is defined by one person's soul breathing life into another person's soul. Impact is an action, a verb, a doing, a gift, not a set quote to be achieved. Authentic impact is found in the very smallest of ways and the biggest of moments when somebody changes something within you forever. 

For Fear 2 Freedom this occurs two-fold. In the giver and the receiver. The giver is the catalyst. The giver assembles the kit, writes a personalized note and provides for the receiver a gift of comfort and joy. The receiver is provided for, cared for, and given hope. Two lives, two strangers, coincide in the smallest of ways and the biggest of moments to be changed forever by an invisible mark, a small act of kindness and compassion. 

This week I completed my last official Fear 2 Freedom event before I embark on my next stage of impact, a master's in counseling. 300 F2F Kits were assembled in Newport Beach and are now heading to Guatemala where they will go directly to women and children wounded by sexual abuse. 

                             

                                                      

In the last year alone, F2F has created a forum for a thousand people to come together to impact thousands. Impact, of course, is not only found in large scale university or community philanthropic events. We are "impacted" by many things, many people, many experiences. This past week I got to see first hand the "Golden Coast". It was truly impacting. Impact, true impact, holds to its authentic form. In the one to one. One moment, one new sight, one new breath. All of these events leave a mark.

One Sunset.

One Balcony View.

 One Poolside Afternoon. 

One Sweet Scent of A Rose Garden.

 One Walk Along The Beach. 

I believe that as we make our way through life we each leave an authentic mark, an impact, on those around us as we give and receive love. Sometimes these marks are bold and visible by the whole world, and other times they are invisible and are never seen. It is the effect of that mark that we keep with us, it is the effect of the mark that we take with us forever. 

This mark, this ripple of love and hope cannot be quantified or measured. It is this current of change that I see first hand creating a tidal wave within the next generation of leaders. This generation, this new world now more then ever have the capacity, the self-drive, the strength of heart to authentically impact this world, to effect generations to come by leaving behind a mark of love. 

-Authentically Me