Are you familiar with GoldieBlox? It’s a toy intended for girls that combines stories with building things. The goal is to help young girls develop skills in engineering and physics.
It was funded nearly twice over on kickstarter a while back and has continued to grow and expand since then.
The kickstarter video continues to stick with me.
These are the first lines:
Hi. My name is Debbie. I’m an engineer from Stanford and I was always bothered by how few women there were in my program. So I decided to do something about it.
She goes on to tell of how as a child she never really played with toys that encouraged building things. Building toys were “boy toys”, so no one thought to get them for her.
Then she talks about putting all of her resources and savings into creating GoldieBlox.
Here it is, if you’d like to watch for yourself:
As I hear her story, I find myself wanting to participate. I want to be a part of her idea. Don’t you?
There’s a reason for that.
When you create something meaningful and deep, others are compelled to participate.[Tweet that]
Debbie Sterling is passionate about an idea: help girls develop engineering skills. And she’s passionate because of her story: being alone in a field dominated by men and her experience of not having toys that helped her play the way that she wanted to play.
She has had to fight for who she is and what she wants to do against a cultural current that says that men should be in this field.
I was moved by the GoldieBlox story because I was moved by Debbie’s story.
Her passion runs deep and comes from her story and the difficult experiences she has had.
This is the meaning of passion: taking what was hard and turning it into energy to help others.[tweet this]
To find your work, start by knowing your story. What are the places of difficulty that make you want to fight something? What are the desires that you find yourself returning to again and again?
