About the Author
Patti cultivates homegrown changemakers prepared to step into their power and work with others to create the world they want to live in. Get in touch to find out how you can grow the social changemaker in yourself and those you serve with Blue Roads Changemaker YOU.
My conversation with Changemaker Laurie Sallee radiates with messages about love, kindness, and compassion. Laurie is quite the storyteller and one particular story around the theme of “firekeepers” has resonated throughout her adult life. You won't want to miss her optimistic “Homegrown Solutions for a Patchwork World.” Despite the challenges conspiring against us, Laurie sees great potential in the human capacity to care for one another and keep each other's fires alight through it all.
Watch the video of our inspiring conversation, listen to the podcast, and read the summary below for a message that will surely help you burn a little brighter in your own changemaking efforts.
Homegrown Laurie
I was a happy girl. So I went out in the garden and out into the shop and into the kitchen, anywhere I could be attached.
Solution-Focused Laurie
Laurie is a lover of storytellers. One particular story she heard at Explore Park near her hometown has shaped her worldview as a Changemaker ever since. It was a story from the Native American tradition presented as part of an historical display. The interpreter's message centered on the role of what he called “firekeepers”. He explained how every village had a special role known as the fire keeper. The firekeeper had two roles. First, they needed to keep the fire going since starting a new fire was difficult. They had to manage the tribe's resources carefully so they didn’t run out of kindling. The second role was to ensure the fire did not get out of control for the safety of all.
Laurie loved that story and found it profoundly applicable to her work as a teacher.
I wanted to encourage and model and give a metaphor to the children about how we could be for each other. We were going to be our own fire keepers. We needed to make sure we kept their fires burning, provided them with what they needed to be happy and healthy and engaged within our group as well.
As a teacher, Laurie wanted to be a firekeeper for her students but instead of stoking a physical fire, she wanted to stoke the passions and wellbeing of her students. Laurie taught students across the spectrum at a Quaker school in Durham, North Carolina called the Carolina Friends School. The education model within the school school was different and more flexible than most and allowed some flexibility for her to get her students out into the world on a regular basis.
We all needed to be aware that a fire can go out of control and how can we watch for that? What do we need to do? How can we gather in the flames when a child is in distress?
Laurie seen here keeping her own fire burning by building guitars!
We need to help maintain an ember and to be there to help bring it back down when needed, too.
Laurie's Patchwork
It was all so much messier than what I had in my head, but I have ended up loving people more.
Mama told me that you are a pitcher and the more you pour yourself out, you have to get refilled or else you get too dry.
Laurie's optimism and passion for learning and life are what refill her on a regular basis. Laurie knows that her optimism is a strategic approach to a world that needs less judgment and more kindness.
Changemaker Laurie
If you keep the ember in a child that's going out or if you can reign in the fire of a child that's out of control, then it's possible that it can have effects in their own adult life and their children's lives.
The values children learn will be the values they teach their children. That creates a cycle of love and compassion.
The second path in Laurie's Changemaker journey is the change she creates in her work with Legal Aid. In this more recent work, Laurie has seen how government policies have created unnecessary challenges for people in dire circumstances. One example she shares is college students unable to afford housing due to high rent and cost of living. She's partnering with her knowledgeable team to provide support unavailable to them otherwise.
No matter what age groups she's tending or what setting she finds herself in, Laurie is thinking about ways she can keep the fires burning for the people she encounters.
I can't tell you the kind of joy and the fuel that it gives kids for adults to sit and play with them.
Intentional listening is Laurie's “secret sauce”. There is so much power in listening to people of any age and communicating with them at their level.
Those little moments when they are communicating with you are the moments that you can tend to the fire within them. When you listen to them, it feeds their soul with kindness and empathy. They carry that wisdom with them for the rest of their lives.
Laurie's efforts as a Changemaker quite clearly address several of the Sustainable Development Goals including Goal #4 – Quality Education, Goal #10 – Reduced Inequalities, and Goal #11 – Sustainable Cities and Communities. The long-term effects of her efforts will ultimately advance Goal #16 – Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions. Perhaps most importantly, her efforts to “keep the fires burning” advances Goal #3 – Good Health and Well-Being.
What have I missed? We will all be better Changemakers when our fires are well lit and tended with care. Thank you, Laurie Sallee, for reminding us of that!
Please get in touch to let us know what YOU and people you know are doing to realize the Global Goals by the year 2030. We know we can do it if we all work together and keep our fires burning brightly for the good of all. CHECK OUT our CHANGEMAKER YOU course to help you get started today!
Patti cultivates homegrown changemakers prepared to step into their power and work with others to create the world they want to live in. Get in touch to find out how you can grow the social changemaker in yourself and those you serve with Blue Roads Changemaker YOU.
