Redefining Success
I’ve come to realize that one of the biggest lessons community work has taught me is that success rarely looks the way I imagined it would.
When you’re the person organizing an event, your mind naturally gravitates toward numbers. How many volunteers will show up? How many tree beds will we finish? How many bags of trash will we collect? You create a picture in your head of what a “successful” day is supposed to look like.
This past weekend, that picture looked like 22 tree beds.
Twenty-two tree beds cared for. Every piece of garbage picked up. Every inch of our block looking just a little better than it did when we came outside.
That didn’t happen.
We finished ten.
Ten tree beds. Cleaner sidewalks. A few dozen bags of trash removed. If I judged the day solely by the checklist I created in my own head, I could have walked away disappointed.
Instead, I walked away reminded of why I do this work.
The people who came didn’t need to be convinced to work. They showed up ready to roll up their sleeves. Neighbors who could have spent a Saturday morning doing anything else chose to spend it caring for a block that belongs to all of us.
But the greatest lesson didn’t come from the adults.
It came from the children.
There were more children than adults, and if I’m being honest, they completely changed the atmosphere.
Adults saw garbage.
Children saw possibility.
As we loosened the soil in the tree beds, they weren’t focused on the litter we were removing. They were fascinated by what had been hiding underneath it all. Worms. Roly-polies. Tiny insects. Life.
While we were trying to restore the tree beds, they were discovering an entire ecosystem.
It made me wonder if somewhere along the way adulthood teaches us to stop noticing wonder.
Children haven’t learned that lesson yet.
They don’t see community service as a chore. They see it as exploration. They don’t care that there are twelve tree beds left unfinished. They’re excited because they found another worm.
Maybe they’re the ones with the right perspective.
Community development isn’t always about transforming an entire neighborhood in a single afternoon. Sometimes it’s about helping one child fall in love with the place they call home.
Because children who spend a Saturday digging in a tree bed today might become the adults who refuse to let that tree bed fall into neglect tomorrow.
That’s how communities change.
Not because one organization cleaned every tree bed.
Not because one leader had the perfect plan.
But because ordinary people, neighbors, parents, and children, decided that this little corner of the Bronx was worth caring for.
People often ask me why I believe so deeply in the Bronx when there are still so many challenges to overcome.
This is why.
Because beneath the trash, there is still life.
Beneath the disinvestment, there is still pride.
Beneath the headlines, there are still neighbors willing to work together.
And beneath all of that, there are children who haven’t stopped believing that their community is something beautiful.
Maybe that’s what Bronx Paradise has always been about.
Not pretending our borough is perfect.
But refusing to stop seeing the beauty that still exists underneath everything we’ve allowed to pile on top of it.
We only finished ten tree beds.
But I think we planted something much bigger than flowers.
We planted ownership.
We planted pride.
We planted the idea that community isn’t something someone else builds for us. It’s something we build together.
One day at a time.