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Welcome to Horizonte, a weekly series that takes a look at important issues through a Hispanic lens.

I'm your host, Catherine Anaya.

We live in a time when nerves are fraying over politics, rising prices, climate change, you name it.

It's easy to feel overwhelmed and even powerless.

But trying times can create an opening to difference makers in our communities.

A new book by a Phoenix author looks at ways that people and organizations can create meaningful social impact.

Joining me now is Kathryn Alonso, author of the Changemakers Toolkit.

It is so nice to see you, Catherine.

Thank you so much for having me.

Another Catherine, we see.

I love that.

Well, I'm anxious to talk to you about this very important subject.

Let's first start off by talking about what is social impact and why does it matter?

Yeah, I think, simply put, social impact is about imagining the world as you believe it should be and then taking action toward that world.

And it matters because the systems that we live within shape our everyday lives.

They impact where we can go to school, the access that we have to in terms of healthcare and jobs.

And so social impact is not this abstract concept, but in fact something that shapes our daily lives and our futures for ourselves, our families and our communities.

But for folks who might be feeling perhaps stuck, they deeply want to make some change, but they're just not feeling like they can be that sort of activist they think they should be.

Where does the change making work come in?

How do you begin that process?

It's such a common question that I receive.

When I first moved to Arizona from the UK to study my master's degree at Arizona State, President Crow came and spoke to our class and he said something that I have never forgotten, and that is that we are all standing on the shoulders of giants and that we get to move the ball forward five yards before we pass it on to the people that come after us.

And so the question isn't, how can I be an activist to fix everything but the question is, what are my five yards?

What do I care the most about?

So if for some people that might look like running for office, but for other people it could look like volunteering or donating your time or money, or getting involved in a local issue that you care a lot about.

But and that changes.

It changes with the season of life.

But the question to always come back to is what are my five yards and what am I doing right now to move the ball forward?

I am finding with a lot of people though right now they're feeling anxiety, helplessness, hopelessness, fear, frustration over politics.

Like I mentioned earlier, health care.

You know, you name it.

There are so many things happening in our country right now that have people feeling a little on edge.

Talk to me a little bit about hope and why you believe as you say in your book, that hope is a strategy, not just a sentiment.

Absolutely.

And I think if you think of progress as the product, that's the thing that we want to end up with.

And people are the engine.

People are the engine that make the progress happen, and hope is the fuel and hope and action could look at a lot of different ways.

It can look like showing up the day after defeat, or calling somebody and offering them support, even though you're so tired yourself or donating to something, a cause that may feel so overwhelming and you just donate what you can.

The thing to remember is that hope is not blind optimism.

That is not what I mean when I talk about hope.

What I mean is it's a choice.

It's a choice to believe that you can make a difference, and that change is possible.

Even if you might have a million reasons not to believe that on a daily basis.

So this book really is not just inspiration, but it's an actual playbook.

Talk to me a little bit about the steps to cut through all of the noise, to make that impact that we want to make socially social impact meaningful?

Absolutely.

So there are four tools in the changemakers Toolkit.

The first one is vision.

What is your imagining for how the world can be?

How it should be?

Two is action.

What are the actual steps you are taking toward making that vision a reality?

Three is values.

What are the core principles that guide you on a daily basis and help you navigate challenges?

And then four is belief.

How are you fostering a conviction that the change you imagine is, in fact, possible?

But I think the thing that's really important to remember about these tools is they're not one.

And done.

They are not things I'm not to do list.

These are things that you can be using through the entirety of your career, of your time as a change maker and somebody that lives in our community and wants to make a difference.

When I was writing the book, I didn't imagine it sort of sitting beautifully on somebody's bookshelf, but I imagined it on the edge of the desk, you know, with pages to them down and underlined and highlighted.

Because I really hope that it is that companion that guides change over and over and over and over.

You write in the book about power, and sometimes power can be frightening for some people.

What is the biggest misconception people have, in your opinion about power?

Often when we're thinking of power, we think about power over power over people, power over outcomes, power over feelings.

And really, that is a craving for control.

And research shows that we come out of the womb with this impulse to want to control our surroundings and our circumstances and the things around us.

But it's a fallacy, like very few of us actually have any real control over things outside of, you know, us.

And if you do have control, if you are somebody that does have that controlling power, it can often be limited, finite, or it comes at a cost.

And the other way of thinking about power is power to power to move forward.

Power to take action.

Power to respond with intention.

And this is really agency which is something that we all have.

So if control is about domain over outcomes and other people, agency is about domain over ourselves and what we can do and what we can do to drive impact and that agency tapping into that agency is actually where sustainable, true, meaningful power comes from.

But right now, the world to so many people feels very urgent.

And maybe they don't feel as in control of what's happening around them.

How do we balance that sense of urgency with like you talk about strategy.

You know, Katherine, I was so lucky to be able to talk to incredible changemakers as I developed the book.

And one of the people I had the honor of sitting down with was Terry Goddard, who was the mayor of Phoenix.

He was Arizona's attorney general, and he also led the effort to tackle dark money and Arizona politics.

And I asked him from all those experiences, what is your biggest lesson about how to make change?

And he said, perseverance.

You must always persevere.

And he said, you must always remember that there are no final outcomes.

And after I talked to him, I thought a lot about that idea of there are no final victories.

There's nothing that we get to hold onto.

And that can be quite sobering.

You know, you don't get to bank any change or victory that you have.

And then I realized if there are no final victories, it means there are no final defeats either.

And today's headlines is not the end point of the story.

It's not the final destination.

It's just a bullet point on a timeline that keeps going.

And so to come back to your question about urgency and strategy, I think you need both, because if you have urgency without intentional strategy, you burn out really quickly.

And if you have strategy without urgency, you will stall out really slowly.

And so it comes back to what Terry taught me, which is you keep going, but you have a vision of the world as it should be, and you take consistent action toward that vision.

You mentioned, like terror.

You talked to several people who have realized and visualized all of what you're talking about.

So can you maybe give our viewers an example or a couple of examples of how that might look to them?

So, for example, if you don't like the way the schools are run, you know, go become a school board member.

That's how you start to begin to see change, right?

Yeah, absolutely.

I think it's about figuring out what is the thing that you care about.

What is the thing that you value and identifying okay, how do I believe the world should be?

And then what what thing am I going to change?

What action am I going to take to move the ball forward?

So let me give you an example from our community.

We are facing one of the most severe housing shortages that we have in generations.

And there's an organization based, company based in our community named home Inc., and they what they do is they work with housing agencies to source user units, housing units that people can live in when they're transitioning out of homelessness.

And they have been doing this for decades.

And they also administer the housing voucher programs.

That makes this possible.

But what they identified is, okay, there actually are not enough property owners and operators that are willing to participate in these housing voucher programs.

And so they they concentrated on that problem, and they launched something called threshold, which is a network that provides support and resources to people that own and operate properties already existing properties, and said to them, you can in fact provide a house somewhere for somebody, somebody to live who really needs it.

And that property can be well-maintained and profitable.

And the results they saw in less than a year were remarkable.

They recruited 447 property owners to participate in these programs that haven't hadn't usually that generated 980 units, which meant that 1250 people had a set of keys to call their own.

Who wants housing?

Yeah, and it doesn't just change lives, it shapes entire communities.

And so what they did is they identified a very specific problem and a part of the problem that they alone were uniquely qualified to concentrate on.

And they thought, okay, how should it be versus how it is?

And then how are we going to get there?

And they are facing all of the same headwinds that the rest of us are, but they just persevered and they refused like Terry.

No fine.

No final anything.

We keep going.

So are you talking about an approach then that can be individualized and work for businesses?

And if so, how do you create that sustainability?

Yeah, absolutely.

So the thing to remember is that change happens everywhere and anywhere and anybody can make it happen.

And anybody can be in a position to respond to it.

And I would actually say that all of us are in a position where we have to respond to change.

And so the Change Makers toolkit is really designed to be used by any organization, any individual, any person, any group of people who want to be able to intentionally shape impact and change.

And the way that you make it sustainable is with intention.

It is about envisioning the world as it should be, taking that consistent, focused action toward that world and then never losing sight, never losing faith that you are capable of making that change.

Taking that first step, no matter how small it might appear to be.

I love that you said that.

That's exactly what it always really comes down to, is what is the next step?

And then you take that and then reevaluate.

What is the core message that you would like for people to walk away with from your book?

It's pretty simple, which is you can make change, but change does not happen unless you believe change can happen.

The good news is that belief in our ability to drive change is actually not something we're born with or not born with, but it's a skill that you can develop.

And so the place to start is to think, okay, what's lighting you up right now?

If it's climate change or immigration or any issue in your local community to think, okay, what do I want the world to look like versus what it does look like?

And then what's the one thing?

What's the next thing I'm going to do?

But you must always believe that you can, that we can all make a difference in some way, shape or form.

Yeah, absolutely.

Kathryn, I want to remind people that the book is called the Changemakers Toolkit.

It is out right now.

Wherever you buy books, please pick it up and support Kathryn and her great ideas in this wonderful book.

I appreciate it so much.

Thank you so much for having me.

Yeah, thanks for being here.

And that's our show for now.

Thank you so much for watching for what is on Arizona PBS.

I'm Kathryn Anaya.

We'll see you next time at the.