Sara’s Evolution Part 1: The Early Days
I’ve always believed that one person could change the world. I don’t know where that belief came from – maybe it was something I always knew deep down to be true.
Something that resonated with my very being. But over time, the world started telling me a different story. My belief, so vivid and unwavering in my mind, was challenged. People, circumstances, the weight of reality – all whispered (sometimes even yelled) that one person couldn’t truly make a difference. Stop being naïve, it said.
Despite those opinions, I still held onto my belief deep down.
My University Days
During my university days I was especially passionate about environmental issues, particularly water. It fascinated me – not just as a resource, but as something that’s deeply essential, and something we take for granted every single day. I became a bit of an advocate. I refused bottled water, urging everyone around me to switch to tap. I was on a committee pushing for reusable bags (this was back in 2009 when reuseable were only used by climate change fanatics).
Water was my passion though. And while I was living in a world where access to water was effortless my experience was, and is, a privileged one. Most of you reading this will have a similar experience to mine, where you can turn on a tap and trust what comes out. But in many parts of the world, that reality is uncommon. Often people have to walk miles – miles – just to reach a well or murky pond. They have no other choice.
This passion eventually connected me with CAWST, a Calgary-based nonprofit, committed to bringing safe drinking water to communities worldwide. I loved their mission but also their commitment to building capacity within the communities they worked; they recognized the importance of education, training, and knowledge to ensure sustainable access long term. For a minute, I thought I wanted to become an international development worker. That didn’t work out. But the work of this organization was my first introduction to the power of capacity building. Something that has stuck with me and I weave into everything I do in my work today.
Then I started traveling, and suddenly, my world cracked open.
Ecuador: The Trip That Changed My Trajectory
My first international travels took me to South America, more specifically, a remote fishing village on the coast of Ecuador. I had the opportunity to spend almost five weeks there – one in the capital learning Spanish and Ecuadorian culture, two volunteering in the community and two weeks of adventure travel (and yes, I jumped off a bridge attached to a stretchy rope).
For this trip to happen during my university days (I was a poor student with little expendable cash), I had to fundraise my way there. I ran bottle drives every week for months, collecting (and begging for) donations from family friends so I could cover my expenses. I became fast friends with the guys at the bottle depot and TILL THIS DAY (almost 15 years later), they ask me where I’m travelling to next. My story and determination stuck with them.
While planning and embarking on that trip I never knew the impact it would have on my life. I was forever changed and I often say, that trip changed the trajectory of my life.
It taught me more about myself than any university course ever did. I arrived thinking I was there to help, but the truth was, being in that fishing community helped me more than I ever could have helped them. The people I met had so much less than I did – yet they were happier, more connected and more at peace.
And with that experience, a realization shifted something in me.
I had it good in Canada, but there was so much more to experience. Immersed in the simplicity of that small village, I also came home to myself. I began to step into who I really was.
Nepal: A Lesson in Resilience
A couple of years later, I traveled to Nepal, volunteering in a children’s home. The kids I met had been placed there because their parents couldn’t afford to care for them. They taught me so much about kindness, compassion and resilience.
One young girl stayed in contact with me. She wanted to support her mother and younger sister, to build a future that was different, one that offered them a better life. She had no reason to believe it was possible. But she did. She had the drive and the dream, but not the resources. She asked me, along with many others who volunteered on this trip, for help so she could go to nursing school. I was still in university at this time and had few extra pennies to share with her. But I had something else: resourcefulness.
So, I fundraised (are you noticing a pattern here?).
I put together my own local event, rallied support, and did what I could to raise something to make sure she had a shot at her dream. She advocated for herself, so I advocated for her.
And I realized that this work was what I wanted to dedicate my life to.
These two traveling experiences shaped me in ways I never could have predicted and inspired me to live my life with purpose. I was getting closer and closer to uncovering where I wanted to dedicate my life.
The Return Home: A Crisis of Purpose
After university, I traveled more. The bug had truly hit me and I planned 6-months of adventure after graduating that took me to the mountainous rice fields in Vietnam, the Angkor Wat temples in Cambodia, the vivid blue waters that surrounded the Gili Islands. I volunteered along the way and experienced more in those six months than most do in a lifetime. And when it was time to return, I almost didn’t.
I didn’t want to come back. I wasn’t sure if Canada was where I was supposed to be anymore, a feeling that didn’t life until a few short years ago.
Alas, I did make it back and reverse culture shock hit me like a brick wall. I couldn’t reconcile what I had seen and experienced abroad, with the western society I now found myself in. I didn’t know how to fit back into a life that suddenly felt too comfortable, too easy, too disconnected from what I had just experienced in different parts of the world.
And then came the existential question that haunted me: What am I going to do with my life?
My first kick at the can was becoming a door-to-door fundraiser. It seemed like a natural fit – I could use my voice to make a difference and raise money for causes that mattered. And at first, I thrived and ranked within the top ten fundraisers in the country for my campaign.
Then the campaign switched. The cause changed. And suddenly, I wasn’t thriving anymore.
The temperatures outside plummeted to record lows, much like the ones we saw this past February. I was knocking on doors in the freezing cold, at night, in the dark, and I wasn’t meeting quota. But it wasn’t just the weather. It was something deeper. The new campaign didn’t feel right to me. I wasn’t connected to the mission, and people on the other side of those doors could feel it.
That was my first real lesson in what it means to work in this space: If you aren’t deeply connected to what you’re doing, it shows. That’s true for fundraisers, for nonprofit leaders, for staff—it’s true for all of us.
Quite quickly this role started to feel like a sales job, not the impact-driven work I wanted it to be. And despite my best efforts, I couldn’t turn it around, so I left to search for something more aligned. I struggled to find a job in the nonprofit or community development space.
I tried. I searched. But nothing.
And so, I found myself stepping in a world where most Calgarians do – working in oil and gas.
Keep reading Part Two - From Pipelines to Purpose.
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I’m Sara (she/her), the leader behind this mission, and I want you to believe in your power to make a difference. Just as a circle has no end and no beginning you too have the infinite potential to evolve, transform, and create change in your community and I want to help you achieve it.
