I never thought twice about volunteering. I was a stranger to it, and if I'm honest, it seemed almost futile in my eyes. I could never grasp how I might make any real difference by myself. The problems always seemed too big for one person to dent.

Then, in the spring of eighth grade, I experienced service through a brand-new lens, and it altered my entire attitude toward it. I was lucky enough to go on a mission trip to Houston, and during that trip we had the opportunity to serve the homeless in many ways.

If I were truthful, I would have gushed to you about how intimidated I was. I had never had any exposure or insight into true homelessness. It was an issue I always stored in my back pocket and treated with far-sighted empathy. An issue for “another day.”

But face-to-face, handing out food, water, and prayers, I was able to see not only how critically some people need help, but how much even small gestures can change the entire trajectory of somebody's day.

If I had to hand you an exact moment where my passive perspective of serving avalanched, I would tell you that week.

Experiencing the impact of volunteering firsthand unlocked a deep love for service I never could have anticipated lived inside of me.

Soon after that discovery, I found a larger issue that disappointed me. There are so many people around us who have the ability to serve. They hold the resources, the time, the talents. And anyone can guess how many organizations are constantly needing help. A lot.

Even so, people choose not to. A lot of the time, we don't know where to start. As a teenager, it's difficult to find opportunities to volunteer. Sometimes we're whipped into the hurricane of a schedule that school, friends, and sports bring. But a lot of the time, I discovered, nobody has ever put the opportunity in front of us.

Maybe that exact issue is where this entire idea stemmed from. In eighth grade, I started dreaming up an idea. What if there existed a club where girls my age could volunteer together and didn't have to go searching for ways to help?

With that tiny spark of ambition, I started, in tiny, doubtful steps, turning the vision into something tangible.

In the early days, I workshopped probably dozens of names. Somehow, even though I spent hours thinking it through, I could never land on one that pinpointed the exact message I wanted this club to portray. I ran into a brick wall of creative deadlock.

And so that small flame of an idea was dulled and dulled until it was just an underlying proposition in the depths of my mind.

That was, until sometime after, I visited an elderly home with my mother.

As a thirteen-year-old who didn't have a phone or any type of entertainment other than eavesdropping on the conversation between the nurse and my mother (a pretty subpar way to pass the time, trust me), I got mind-numbingly bored.

So I wandered the halls in search of something interesting. That wish was answered loudly as I neared a corner boasting a room that was the epitome of “entertainment.” TVs mounted on every wall, games stacked high, and most prominently, half-done puzzles cluttering the tables. I sat down at the first table and quickly got distracted, piecing together a puzzle.

After a little while, an elderly man wheeled up next to me and sat at my side. I could tell from his hat he was a Vietnam veteran, and I could see he had lost both of his legs.

I was immediately terrified that I was unknowingly doing his puzzle. I apologized and offered to move to another table so he could finish what was left of it.

To my surprise and relief, he asked me to stay and finish it with him. It seemed like the least I could do, so I did.

For the next hour or so we sat side by side, piecing together this puzzle and talking. He told me about his whole life. I heard about each of his grandchildren, his wife who passed earlier that year, his days serving, and how he lost his legs. At some point he told me how much he appreciated it when volunteers came to the home, because he didn't get many opportunities to sit and talk with someone young.

I hadn't gone into that room intending to volunteer. I wasn't raising money. I wasn't doing some huge, flashy service project. I was simply doing a puzzle with someone who didn't want to do it alone.

That is when my view of volunteering turned all the way around. Volunteering doesn't have to be huge. Sometimes making a difference looks like picking up trash you saw on the side of the road. Sometimes it's serving a meal to a neighbor going through a hard time. Sometimes it's writing a card to a hospitalized kid you'll never meet.

And sometimes, like in my case, it's sitting down and doing a puzzle with someone for an hour.

After all those months of uncertainty, it hit me.

SHIFT.

Because that is exactly what I believe service is capable of doing. It can create a shift in someone's day. A shift for a family that needs help. A shift for an organization that needs another set of hands. And sometimes, like it did for me in Houston and in that puzzle room, a shift in the volunteer as well.

When enough people choose to serve, little by little, these small steps can create a much bigger shift in an entire community.

There was another part of SHIFT that mattered to me just as much.

Let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.

That verse captures exactly what I want SHIFT to be. As Christians, it's easy to say that we love people. It's easy to talk about serving others, caring for our community, or wanting to make a difference. But if I have learned anything in the past eight years of pursuing Christ in all parts of life, it's that our faith is not supposed to stop at what we say. It should move us to action.

That is exactly where the full meaning of SHIFT was born.

Students Helping in Faith Today

That last word, today, is especially important to me. Because today is not someday when we're older. Not someday when we finally have enough money. Not someday when we have more time.

It's right now. God has already equipped us with the means to serve the ones who need it most. There are talents we can use, people we can encourage, and faith we can put into action.

I hope SHIFT can become an organization where girls our age can take what we have been given and actually do something with it.

And I hope that through every impact we make, every hour we choose to give, and maybe even every puzzle we choose to sit down and do, we can be the shift that changes our community for the better.