A few days ago, I was talking to a co-worker about my class load for this semester. I mentioned to her that I was taking a Positive Deviance class and her reaction was “what is that?” I thought to myself, ok, how can I make this explanation relevant to her experiences. I remembered a fundraising project we worked on last year for the organization. In a planning meeting to discuss our fundraising options, we asked questions like, “what works for us?”, “what is something we want to do?” and “what would be something of interest to those involved?”
Ideas were brainstormed; however instead of making a decision among the staff, we decided to go the people most involved our consumers. After a couple of conversations with consumer, a decision was made to put together a talent show, but not just any talent show. It would be the first integrated talent show in the history of El Paso, with disabled and non-disabled participants. This was something that had never been done before and it was quite a success.
I reminded her of this situation and explained that a positive deviance is community driven, and in our case, a consumer driven approach. Our organization was in need of funds and instead of making a decision among the staff, which is required to work for the benefit of the organization, we sought the ideas and opinions of the consumers whose contributions are needed for the benefit of the organization.
“Oh I get it now.” Many times we are positive deviants and are change makers in our worlds; it’s just a matter of discovery.
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