[Music]
the title of my talk is finding your
light and letting it shine and I guess
what I would like to do today is is a
couple of things I’d like to share with
you my story in my personal journey of
finding my light and why I think it’s
important to once we start to articulate
our sense of self and find our light to
share it with others and I guess the
other thing I’d like to talk about today
is a little bit about the contributions
that we can make the tremendous
difference that we can make to the
people around us to our communities and
maybe even the world by understanding
what our purpose is and again sharing
that with others and the last thing I’d
like to talk about and maybe the message
overall that you know I’ve heard
throughout a lot of these conversations
today is that the journey that we’re on
is is just that it’s a journey the
journey of self-discovery is really a
journey with no destination and I think
the destination is really the legacy
that we leave when we depart this place
and now we have a choice to make as to
what that legacy can be and so for
myself I’ve always been one who has has
really delved into myself and reflected
a lot in terms of my identity and core
values and I like to use the term light
and for me this this journey started a
long time ago in a place called
Bangladesh and I traveled there the late
90s almost 20 years ago as a student to
study international development to work
with a local NGO there and I really
wanted to thrust myself into an
environment that was very very different
from my own and at the time I was living
on the Canadian Prairies cold winters
flat landscape and it couldn’t be more
different than the streets of Bangladesh
where one of the world’s most densely
populated countries and I come from one
of the world’s least densely populated
countries high levels of poverty yet an
extremely colorful and vibrant and
beautiful people that live there and
they welcomed me into their community
and I lived there for three months and
it was here that I really started to
delve into the idea of reflection and so
each evening after I had spent a day in
the field
I would meditate with the cows though
I’m kidding I would
each evening I would reflect on my
experiences of the day and I would
journal about it and over the course of
three months I wrote hundreds and
hundreds of pages of my journals and
what what it started to happen was I
wasn’t writing so much about the
experience of the day but I was writing
more about how that experience impacted
me and what kind of meaning it had on me
and how this experience was shaping me
as a person and starting to challenge my
perspectives in worldview and so it was
a very very deep and meaningful
experience for me over the course of
three months and what I discovered when
I walked away was that this was was
shaping me and I wanted to do more of
this and also discovered a deep desire
to share this kind of experience with
others it was really important for me to
say to myself this was great for me this
impacted me it changed me as a person I
want to do more of this but I think
other people would find value in this
experience as well I think these kinds
of experience are transformational I
want to share that with others and it
was through this that over the course of
the last 20 years I’ve created
experience of learning programs in my
own country of Canada but in places like
El Salvador in Bangladesh in Costa Rica
and Ecuador and and I discovered the
tremendous value of again not just
articulating my sense of purpose and
exercising it but allowing others to do
the same the idea of finding my light
but helping others find theirs as well
and I discovered by thrusting myself
into these experiences that were very
foreign from my own and pulling myself
out of my comfort zone that a couple
things needed to happen to truly enhance
and maximize that experience for me and
that was number one I had to be opened
and I would encourage those that were on
this journey with me to be open and not
just open to a different landscape or
two different food but I think most
importantly to be open to conversations
that challenge our perspective to be
open to a world view that might be
different from your own and to be
uncomfortable with that but to be okay
with that discomfort and I think the
second thing that I challenge people to
do is to be aware eyes and ears wide
open but more importantly hearts and
minds wide open and to experience and
savor everything that these experiences
could bring and it’s again the sights
and the sounds and the smells and the
conversations and the magic that happens
around us all the time and I’ve got to
experience that here today of observing
people interacting in the community here
in bed
it’s been amazing to watch the energy
and the life that exists here and so I
do that and that’s what I’ve always done
and throughout these experiences over
the course of the last 20 years I would
add a methodology if you will to this to
this approach and so I would experience
something reflect on it interpret its
meaning for myself and then from there I
write about it and journaling is
something that’s become a part of my
life and it’s something I’ve woven in
and out of my experience for the for the
last 20 years and it really helps for me
to understand what it is the experience
and interpret its meaning for me and so
from there this is kind of what I did
over the course of 20 years
delving in and out of these experiences
weaving it into my career into my
personal life and I discovered my mantra
to really be creating opportunities for
people to transform to connect people
with experiences and opportunities I
wanted to help people increase their
capacity to discover their purpose to
increase their capacity for love to
increase their capacity for contribution
and so these words meant a lot to me as
I would write about it continuously and
share these thoughts with others and
share these experiences with others with
hope that they would find a sense of
purpose that they would find their life
when something shifted a few years ago
for me about four years ago I moved my
family across the country Canada the
fairly large country and we moved 2500
kilometers from the prairies of Manitoba
to of central Canada and Toronto and and
it’s our largest populated area within
our country and I did this to pursue my
career aspirations I wanted to challenge
myself I wanted to do something
different and I joined a company that
was extremely successful we’re the best
at what we do in our country and I had
achieved a lot of success throughout the
first few years there but I realized
that something was missing and as I
would reflect on my experience there was
a bit of an emptiness there there was a
disconnect from what I had done and what
I had always done with respect to
connecting with communities and people
and finding purpose and meaning in my
life and I really delved into this and
it created a bit of disruption inside of
me and I realized that I was defining
myself by success and not so much health
and well-being an impact and making a
difference and this impacted me
significantly as I started to reflect on
this experience and this
I was on now went over the course of the
past twelve months something drastically
took me past that tipping point of
reflection I lost to really really good
friends when I hadn’t seen for years and
what I was still very close to and while
I’d experienced lost before of family
members and others in my life this was
different because of what they
represented they represent a community
and contribution and connection to
people and it made me ask questions of
myself that why I diverged from my path
to pursue success as opposed to
connection and community and then
personally I had some minor health
issues nothing life-threatening but
enough to make me step back and ask some
serious questions about the choices I
was making with respect to my lifestyle
and was I being successful at the
expense of my own health and well-being
physical mental and emotional and it
created the strong sense of disruption
and I was uncomfortable with myself and
it was very similar to the way I felt 20
years ago in Bangladesh I’d become a bit
of a stranger in my own land and more
appropriately a stranger in my own head
and so this impacted me and so I went
back to reflecting further on the
experience and what I realized was that
I wasn’t so much on a journey of
discovering Who I am I was now on a new
journey of discovering Who I am not and
this had a profound effect on me so I
went back to the thing that I’d always
known and I went back to journaling and
I went back to writing a lot and I went
back to the approach of saying I need to
be open to the experience that I’m
engaging in right now and asked myself
some serious questions and be honest
with myself I had to go back to that
sense of awareness of everything that
was around me all of the signs all of
the messages that were around me and I
put the blinders on because I was
focusing on outcomes and not the process
those focus focusing on being successful
and not so much the meaning behind what
it is that I was doing and everything
kept bringing me back to those things
that I’d begun to articulate twenty
years ago around the sense of connection
a sense of community
my mantra being connecting people with
opportunities and experiences my man
robbed me of creating transformational
experiences that increase people’s
capacity to find purpose in their life
and it kept coming back to this and so
as I wrote and I wrote and I wrote
something hit me and it was the idea to
create something as an expression I
wanted to make a declaration as
this is who I am and this is what I do
regardless of what like title is in my
career regardless of anything else
related to that this was my ultimate
expression of Who I am as a person and
so instead of dipping my toe in the
water of this I wanted to make this
declaration as to Who I am
every single day of my life and so I
created something called Munem and
hounam is a Latin word that means one
and the simplicity of the concept and
for myself and getting back to my core
was really about one person making a
difference one person making a good
contribution to another and simple as
that that our mantra is one cause in one
community and it’s very open and very
fluid and so as this idea began to
evolve inside of me and I had the
ability and the opportunity to express
myself through this it really started to
flourish and like everything else in my
life as long as I focused on the process
and not an end product as long as I
didn’t define it as something as a goal
or an experience as long as I didn’t
define it in a way that allowed others
to define it for me as long as I stay
true to my sense of purpose the idea
continued to flourish and it was that
about this time that I have read a book
called tribes by Seth Godin he’s one of
my most favorite authors and he’s very
simple honest approach in his language
and the book tribes is really about
people seeking out a movement and it’s
about people wanting more than a goal or
success or outcomes it’s about meaning
and purpose and it’s about the journey
it’s about wanting to believe in
something as opposed to blindly
following something and we’ve heard some
of these themes earlier today and I
found that very interesting and so as I
read this book it really resonated with
me I felt connected to the words that
were on the pages and what it really
spoke to was the fact that I felt I was
creating a bit of a movement and if the
movement was just me and one other that
was okay but it was at this point that I
reached out to and I created something
called the unum Society and I thought
let’s create a movement here let’s do
something special that others can share
in this journey that is unum and the
idea that one person with one idea with
one contribution and one simple act of
kindness to make
significant difference in the lives of
others and so the you know society was
born out of this as an extension of the
UNAM concept and I reached out to seven
people from all over the world and asked
them to join me on this journey so from
Germany to Costa Rica from Bangladesh to
El Salvador to my home country of Canada
with this amazing eclectic mix of
individuals that all brings some very
unique and special talents and some
unique and special perspectives but they
all share the will and desire to
transform the community around them and
the journey that we’ve been having
together in the conversations that we’ve
been having has been unbelievable and
amazing
and it’s been really special to share
this with others around the globe
so as this idea has been evolving and
unfolding and we’re telling our story
through our blog and we’re engaging in
projects and various places around the
world and sharing ideas and perspectives
us to how others can create a cause for
themselves how others can find their
sense of purpose through these
conversations the response has been
really interesting and I’m grateful to
people like marina and the others up
there Freddie and cyd and Ivan and
Sabrina and Tomas and Kayla from where
they’re coming from to share their
perspectives has been really special for
me and so in a way I’m not just now
finding my light I’m helping others find
theirs and they’re doing the same and
paying that forward and so the journey
has been amazing and the response has
been tremendous and we’ve been getting
conversations and receiving questions
from individuals from all over the world
just wanting to engage in a dialogue
about how they can create change in
their communities but from there the
concept does have some questions about
it and what does this mean and why is
this different what is so special about
the UNAM Society that I can’t go and
pick up any self-help book in the
library and read about a way that I can
find purpose and there’s a lots of great
books out there and everybody has to
find their own way whether it’s using
the term love or purpose or light or
passion or your gifts everybody has
their own way of interpreting that and
there’s lots of great organizations out
there that can connect you with
communities to provide service and and
to contribute to the livelihoods of
others and their well-being but I think
what makes us special is is a couple of
things when I think about the end of
society it really is grounded in the sim
notion that one person can make a
difference and we’re really talking
about making a difference one person at
a time it’s not so much about becoming
the next Nelson Mandela or Martin Luther
King jr. that’s great to aspire to that
but I really want people to be better
neighbors I want people to not be
judgmental when they see a homeless
person on the streets I want people to
be better family members and be more
compassionate and empathetic and
understanding that’s where the dialogue
starts that’s where transformation
starts it starts within before we can
transform someone else and that’s really
what the UNAM society is about it’s
about being an ordinary Joe and finding
your passion and exercising it and
letting it shine for others and I guess
the last thing I would leave you with in
terms of what I feel our our purpose or
a mission is is best described by a
story I’d like to share about ten years
ago I had the the opportunity to engage
in a community development project in in
El Salvador and we worked with a local
non-governmental organization there in a
local community and the community had
asked to provide to have some support in
creating a pathway to their water source
and in their community where 88 families
live on the side of a mountain their
water source was at the base of the
mountain there was a spring into the
stream and and at that time it was
really just a single track animal trail
carved in the side of the mountain and
during the rainy season it was almost
impossible for people to access their
water and so they’d asked us to maybe we
can engage in this project with them and
so we went to El Salvador myself and
some colleagues and some students and we
engaged in a project that was quite
simple we were to build a 200 meter long
2 meter wide hand made out of volcanic
rock pathway down to this water source
and over the course of the first few
days we discovered that we’re not just
connecting with with this community
we’re connecting with people that had
become friends of ours they become part
of our community part of our tribe and
we shared something very special there
and whether it was sharing our water on
the mountainside that’s a very very
powerful humanistic exercise or whether
it was sharing our stories with each
other and asking about our families and
and being interested in who we were as
individuals and people the conversations
were very deep and caused us to reflect
a lot on our experience and what we
discovered was that the pathway that we
were building to the water source was
very
Maulik for what we were doing there it
was really just our outlet it was our
way of exercising our love for humanity
that’s what we were there to do and I
recall one night around the campfire we
were having this conversation about
sharing we weren’t there to give anybody
anything it wasn’t about charity it was
really about sharing an experience
together it was about connecting people
connecting with people and it was very
simple yet very colorful messages when
there was a bit of a pause in the
conversation and I remember the
gentleman on the right his name is Don
Severino Mendez and at the time he was
in his mid 70s and here’s an individual
living in a country like El Salvador
that had experienced a horrific civil
war natural disasters and poverty and
violence and this gentleman had seen it
all very wise old guy and we nicknamed
him pops and he would sit around the
campfire at night with us and we would
tell stories and he was kind of this
wise old sage that would would share
advice and tell us stories and when he
said something in Spanish that our group
immediately turned to our interpreter
Freddy Ramos who is also a member of the
unit society now and I could tell by the
look on Freddy’s face that what pops had
said was extremely powerful and there
was a gravity to to what he had said and
as our attention turned to Freddy he
looked at us and in English said and
interpreting what posset said to us that
what you’re really here doing is sharing
your love with us and that love is a
gift from God and we have a
responsibility to share it with others
and think about that for a moment the
love is a gift from God and we have a
responsibility to share that with others
that’s very powerful and whether you
believe in God or not is completely
irrelevant when you think about the
message behind what he had said that
we’ve been given a gift that we have
something special within us whether you
describe it as love or your gifts or
your passion and in my case I like to
use the term light we all possess
something very special and unique that
we need to share with others that we
have a responsibility as human beings to
share with others and that moment is
frozen in time for me and I think about
it every day and it means a lot to me
and that’s what the purpose is behind
the UNAM society as we feel we have a
responsibility to shine our
and help others do the same and I think
right here right now at this period of
time in our history what could be more
important thank you
[Music]
the title of my talk is finding your
light and letting it shine and I guess
what I would like to do today is is a
couple of things I’d like to share with
you my story in my personal journey of
finding my light and why I think it’s
important to once we start to articulate
our sense of self and find our light to
share it with others and I guess the
other thing I’d like to talk about today
is a little bit about the contributions
that we can make the tremendous
difference that we can make to the
people around us to our communities and
maybe even the world by understanding
what our purpose is and again sharing
that with others and the last thing I’d
like to talk about and maybe the message
overall that you know I’ve heard
throughout a lot of these conversations
today is that the journey that we’re on
is is just that it’s a journey the
journey of self-discovery is really a
journey with no destination and I think
the destination is really the legacy
that we leave when we depart this place
and now we have a choice to make as to
what that legacy can be and so for
myself I’ve always been one who has has
really delved into myself and reflected
a lot in terms of my identity and core
values and I like to use the term light
and for me this this journey started a
long time ago in a place called
Bangladesh and I traveled there the late
90s almost 20 years ago as a student to
study international development to work
with a local NGO there and I really
wanted to thrust myself into an
environment that was very very different
from my own and at the time I was living
on the Canadian Prairies cold winters
flat landscape and it couldn’t be more
different than the streets of Bangladesh
where one of the world’s most densely
populated countries and I come from one
of the world’s least densely populated
countries high levels of poverty yet an
extremely colorful and vibrant and
beautiful people that live there and
they welcomed me into their community
and I lived there for three months and
it was here that I really started to
delve into the idea of reflection and so
each evening after I had spent a day in
the field
I would meditate with the cows though
I’m kidding I would
each evening I would reflect on my
experiences of the day and I would
journal about it and over the course of
three months I wrote hundreds and
hundreds of pages of my journals and
what what it started to happen was I
wasn’t writing so much about the
experience of the day but I was writing
more about how that experience impacted
me and what kind of meaning it had on me
and how this experience was shaping me
as a person and starting to challenge my
perspectives in worldview and so it was
a very very deep and meaningful
experience for me over the course of
three months and what I discovered when
I walked away was that this was was
shaping me and I wanted to do more of
this and also discovered a deep desire
to share this kind of experience with
others it was really important for me to
say to myself this was great for me this
impacted me it changed me as a person I
want to do more of this but I think
other people would find value in this
experience as well I think these kinds
of experience are transformational I
want to share that with others and it
was through this that over the course of
the last 20 years I’ve created
experience of learning programs in my
own country of Canada but in places like
El Salvador in Bangladesh in Costa Rica
and Ecuador and and I discovered the
tremendous value of again not just
articulating my sense of purpose and
exercising it but allowing others to do
the same the idea of finding my light
but helping others find theirs as well
and I discovered by thrusting myself
into these experiences that were very
foreign from my own and pulling myself
out of my comfort zone that a couple
things needed to happen to truly enhance
and maximize that experience for me and
that was number one I had to be opened
and I would encourage those that were on
this journey with me to be open and not
just open to a different landscape or
two different food but I think most
importantly to be open to conversations
that challenge our perspective to be
open to a world view that might be
different from your own and to be
uncomfortable with that but to be okay
with that discomfort and I think the
second thing that I challenge people to
do is to be aware eyes and ears wide
open but more importantly hearts and
minds wide open and to experience and
savor everything that these experiences
could bring and it’s again the sights
and the sounds and the smells and the
conversations and the magic that happens
around us all the time and I’ve got to
experience that here today of observing
people interacting in the community here
in bed
it’s been amazing to watch the energy
and the life that exists here and so I
do that and that’s what I’ve always done
and throughout these experiences over
the course of the last 20 years I would
add a methodology if you will to this to
this approach and so I would experience
something reflect on it interpret its
meaning for myself and then from there I
write about it and journaling is
something that’s become a part of my
life and it’s something I’ve woven in
and out of my experience for the for the
last 20 years and it really helps for me
to understand what it is the experience
and interpret its meaning for me and so
from there this is kind of what I did
over the course of 20 years
delving in and out of these experiences
weaving it into my career into my
personal life and I discovered my mantra
to really be creating opportunities for
people to transform to connect people
with experiences and opportunities I
wanted to help people increase their
capacity to discover their purpose to
increase their capacity for love to
increase their capacity for contribution
and so these words meant a lot to me as
I would write about it continuously and
share these thoughts with others and
share these experiences with others with
hope that they would find a sense of
purpose that they would find their life
when something shifted a few years ago
for me about four years ago I moved my
family across the country Canada the
fairly large country and we moved 2500
kilometers from the prairies of Manitoba
to of central Canada and Toronto and and
it’s our largest populated area within
our country and I did this to pursue my
career aspirations I wanted to challenge
myself I wanted to do something
different and I joined a company that
was extremely successful we’re the best
at what we do in our country and I had
achieved a lot of success throughout the
first few years there but I realized
that something was missing and as I
would reflect on my experience there was
a bit of an emptiness there there was a
disconnect from what I had done and what
I had always done with respect to
connecting with communities and people
and finding purpose and meaning in my
life and I really delved into this and
it created a bit of disruption inside of
me and I realized that I was defining
myself by success and not so much health
and well-being an impact and making a
difference and this impacted me
significantly as I started to reflect on
this experience and this
I was on now went over the course of the
past twelve months something drastically
took me past that tipping point of
reflection I lost to really really good
friends when I hadn’t seen for years and
what I was still very close to and while
I’d experienced lost before of family
members and others in my life this was
different because of what they
represented they represent a community
and contribution and connection to
people and it made me ask questions of
myself that why I diverged from my path
to pursue success as opposed to
connection and community and then
personally I had some minor health
issues nothing life-threatening but
enough to make me step back and ask some
serious questions about the choices I
was making with respect to my lifestyle
and was I being successful at the
expense of my own health and well-being
physical mental and emotional and it
created the strong sense of disruption
and I was uncomfortable with myself and
it was very similar to the way I felt 20
years ago in Bangladesh I’d become a bit
of a stranger in my own land and more
appropriately a stranger in my own head
and so this impacted me and so I went
back to reflecting further on the
experience and what I realized was that
I wasn’t so much on a journey of
discovering Who I am I was now on a new
journey of discovering Who I am not and
this had a profound effect on me so I
went back to the thing that I’d always
known and I went back to journaling and
I went back to writing a lot and I went
back to the approach of saying I need to
be open to the experience that I’m
engaging in right now and asked myself
some serious questions and be honest
with myself I had to go back to that
sense of awareness of everything that
was around me all of the signs all of
the messages that were around me and I
put the blinders on because I was
focusing on outcomes and not the process
those focus focusing on being successful
and not so much the meaning behind what
it is that I was doing and everything
kept bringing me back to those things
that I’d begun to articulate twenty
years ago around the sense of connection
a sense of community
my mantra being connecting people with
opportunities and experiences my man
robbed me of creating transformational
experiences that increase people’s
capacity to find purpose in their life
and it kept coming back to this and so
as I wrote and I wrote and I wrote
something hit me and it was the idea to
create something as an expression I
wanted to make a declaration as
this is who I am and this is what I do
regardless of what like title is in my
career regardless of anything else
related to that this was my ultimate
expression of Who I am as a person and
so instead of dipping my toe in the
water of this I wanted to make this
declaration as to Who I am
every single day of my life and so I
created something called Munem and
hounam is a Latin word that means one
and the simplicity of the concept and
for myself and getting back to my core
was really about one person making a
difference one person making a good
contribution to another and simple as
that that our mantra is one cause in one
community and it’s very open and very
fluid and so as this idea began to
evolve inside of me and I had the
ability and the opportunity to express
myself through this it really started to
flourish and like everything else in my
life as long as I focused on the process
and not an end product as long as I
didn’t define it as something as a goal
or an experience as long as I didn’t
define it in a way that allowed others
to define it for me as long as I stay
true to my sense of purpose the idea
continued to flourish and it was that
about this time that I have read a book
called tribes by Seth Godin he’s one of
my most favorite authors and he’s very
simple honest approach in his language
and the book tribes is really about
people seeking out a movement and it’s
about people wanting more than a goal or
success or outcomes it’s about meaning
and purpose and it’s about the journey
it’s about wanting to believe in
something as opposed to blindly
following something and we’ve heard some
of these themes earlier today and I
found that very interesting and so as I
read this book it really resonated with
me I felt connected to the words that
were on the pages and what it really
spoke to was the fact that I felt I was
creating a bit of a movement and if the
movement was just me and one other that
was okay but it was at this point that I
reached out to and I created something
called the unum Society and I thought
let’s create a movement here let’s do
something special that others can share
in this journey that is unum and the
idea that one person with one idea with
one contribution and one simple act of
kindness to make
significant difference in the lives of
others and so the you know society was
born out of this as an extension of the
UNAM concept and I reached out to seven
people from all over the world and asked
them to join me on this journey so from
Germany to Costa Rica from Bangladesh to
El Salvador to my home country of Canada
with this amazing eclectic mix of
individuals that all brings some very
unique and special talents and some
unique and special perspectives but they
all share the will and desire to
transform the community around them and
the journey that we’ve been having
together in the conversations that we’ve
been having has been unbelievable and
amazing
and it’s been really special to share
this with others around the globe
so as this idea has been evolving and
unfolding and we’re telling our story
through our blog and we’re engaging in
projects and various places around the
world and sharing ideas and perspectives
us to how others can create a cause for
themselves how others can find their
sense of purpose through these
conversations the response has been
really interesting and I’m grateful to
people like marina and the others up
there Freddie and cyd and Ivan and
Sabrina and Tomas and Kayla from where
they’re coming from to share their
perspectives has been really special for
me and so in a way I’m not just now
finding my light I’m helping others find
theirs and they’re doing the same and
paying that forward and so the journey
has been amazing and the response has
been tremendous and we’ve been getting
conversations and receiving questions
from individuals from all over the world
just wanting to engage in a dialogue
about how they can create change in
their communities but from there the
concept does have some questions about
it and what does this mean and why is
this different what is so special about
the UNAM Society that I can’t go and
pick up any self-help book in the
library and read about a way that I can
find purpose and there’s a lots of great
books out there and everybody has to
find their own way whether it’s using
the term love or purpose or light or
passion or your gifts everybody has
their own way of interpreting that and
there’s lots of great organizations out
there that can connect you with
communities to provide service and and
to contribute to the livelihoods of
others and their well-being but I think
what makes us special is is a couple of
things when I think about the end of
society it really is grounded in the sim
notion that one person can make a
difference and we’re really talking
about making a difference one person at
a time it’s not so much about becoming
the next Nelson Mandela or Martin Luther
King jr. that’s great to aspire to that
but I really want people to be better
neighbors I want people to not be
judgmental when they see a homeless
person on the streets I want people to
be better family members and be more
compassionate and empathetic and
understanding that’s where the dialogue
starts that’s where transformation
starts it starts within before we can
transform someone else and that’s really
what the UNAM society is about it’s
about being an ordinary Joe and finding
your passion and exercising it and
letting it shine for others and I guess
the last thing I would leave you with in
terms of what I feel our our purpose or
a mission is is best described by a
story I’d like to share about ten years
ago I had the the opportunity to engage
in a community development project in in
El Salvador and we worked with a local
non-governmental organization there in a
local community and the community had
asked to provide to have some support in
creating a pathway to their water source
and in their community where 88 families
live on the side of a mountain their
water source was at the base of the
mountain there was a spring into the
stream and and at that time it was
really just a single track animal trail
carved in the side of the mountain and
during the rainy season it was almost
impossible for people to access their
water and so they’d asked us to maybe we
can engage in this project with them and
so we went to El Salvador myself and
some colleagues and some students and we
engaged in a project that was quite
simple we were to build a 200 meter long
2 meter wide hand made out of volcanic
rock pathway down to this water source
and over the course of the first few
days we discovered that we’re not just
connecting with with this community
we’re connecting with people that had
become friends of ours they become part
of our community part of our tribe and
we shared something very special there
and whether it was sharing our water on
the mountainside that’s a very very
powerful humanistic exercise or whether
it was sharing our stories with each
other and asking about our families and
and being interested in who we were as
individuals and people the conversations
were very deep and caused us to reflect
a lot on our experience and what we
discovered was that the pathway that we
were building to the water source was
very
Maulik for what we were doing there it
was really just our outlet it was our
way of exercising our love for humanity
that’s what we were there to do and I
recall one night around the campfire we
were having this conversation about
sharing we weren’t there to give anybody
anything it wasn’t about charity it was
really about sharing an experience
together it was about connecting people
connecting with people and it was very
simple yet very colorful messages when
there was a bit of a pause in the
conversation and I remember the
gentleman on the right his name is Don
Severino Mendez and at the time he was
in his mid 70s and here’s an individual
living in a country like El Salvador
that had experienced a horrific civil
war natural disasters and poverty and
violence and this gentleman had seen it
all very wise old guy and we nicknamed
him pops and he would sit around the
campfire at night with us and we would
tell stories and he was kind of this
wise old sage that would would share
advice and tell us stories and when he
said something in Spanish that our group
immediately turned to our interpreter
Freddy Ramos who is also a member of the
unit society now and I could tell by the
look on Freddy’s face that what pops had
said was extremely powerful and there
was a gravity to to what he had said and
as our attention turned to Freddy he
looked at us and in English said and
interpreting what posset said to us that
what you’re really here doing is sharing
your love with us and that love is a
gift from God and we have a
responsibility to share it with others
and think about that for a moment the
love is a gift from God and we have a
responsibility to share that with others
that’s very powerful and whether you
believe in God or not is completely
irrelevant when you think about the
message behind what he had said that
we’ve been given a gift that we have
something special within us whether you
describe it as love or your gifts or
your passion and in my case I like to
use the term light we all possess
something very special and unique that
we need to share with others that we
have a responsibility as human beings to
share with others and that moment is
frozen in time for me and I think about
it every day and it means a lot to me
and that’s what the purpose is behind
the UNAM society as we feel we have a
responsibility to shine our
and help others do the same and I think
right here right now at this period of
time in our history what could be more
important thank you
[Music]
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