It started with a salsa dance class. Barry and I had been taking salsa for a year, repeating the intermediate class for months until we were ready for the advanced. A few weeks later, Margaret Willson waltzed into the advanced class and turned our lives upside down. In a good way.

Margaret had never taken a salsa class, but she knew how to dance. She jumped right into the advanced class with confidence and aplomb.

At the time, she had just returned to the States from Brazil. My first impression was of a statuesque blonde with an intriguing accent. It wasn’t quite British, but she said “holiday” instead of “vacation.” Margaret was an anthropologist, originally from Oregon, who had lived all over the world, hence the accent I couldn’t place.

Our friendship formed around dancing, walks, and swims in chilly Lake Washington. With her Ph.D., several universities wanted her to teach anthropology, but she wanted to leave the academic world and do something else. I now know that what she was considering is called practical or applied anthropology.

At the time, I was a graphic designer at Arthur Andersen. Although I’d previously had my own editing and design business, at AA, I was a second-class citizen. The company valued employees who worked directly for clients and brought in revenue. My position was considered overhead and less valued. As a result, my self-esteem was low.

So I was surprised and honored when Margaret told me one day that she was starting a 501(c)3 nonprofit, and she asked me to be on the board of directors.

I had no idea what I was taking on. None of us did.

Margaret described to me the grueling poverty in the shantytowns of Salvador, Bahia, Brazil. She had lived there for several years and had worked with a remarkable research assistant, a woman named Rita (pronounced HEE-ta) who had graduated from college in spite of her shantytown upbringing. She and Rita had decided to address the poverty by helping girls get an education.

In Seattle, there were four of us on the original board, one for each position. Margaret was president. Eduardo Mendonça, a Brazilian musician, was vice president. He was the one who came up with the name, Bahia Street. Pat Ingrassia brought years of social activism experience, but it was the first time he’d ever been a treasurer. Margaret had met him while riding the Metro bus he drove on Vashon Island.. I was secretary, responsible for taking notes at the meetings.

I vividly remember the meeting at the corner booth in the Jackrabbit restaurant, in downtown Seattle. The four of us put our hands together on the table and committed to one year of funding. We agreed to be responsible for the education of one girl, an orphan named Juliana who lived with her sister. Our bank account had about $45.

It was a overwhelming commitment. To pay for Juliana’s private school tuition alone, we needed several hundred dollars a month. We also needed to pay for her books, school uniforms, bus fare, and a small stipend to her sister.

I was so panicked at the thought, I never stopped to think about the level of commitment Rita was taking on.

At the time, I thought of her as another friend of Margaret’s, someone who’d been talked into this project by my earnest and persuasive friend. Nothing was further from the truth. In the beginning, Rita had been the persuasive one. She had talked Margaret into starting the project.

Thousands of miles from Brazil, I jumped into the challenges of starting a non-profit. I designed a Bahia Street logo and a fancy brochure and we had our first mailing party, using a mailing list loaned to us by Eduardo. We had house parties and dances and sold beer at Carnival. We put on a summer festival, São João, with a day and a half of activities. We even had a rummage sale at my house, although most of the volunteers would like to forget that one.

Meanwhile, Margaret was doing what she does best, connecting and inspiring people to get involved. She raised substantial sums from wealthy friends in England, wrote grants, and turned the supporting community into a real community. The money began to trickle in, not the big grants we expected, but many small monthly checks from individuals.

In Brazil, Rita found four additional girls to add to the program. They were bright, but the public schools had left them illiterate. One, Renata, was 7 years old and had never been to school. Rita hired a tutor to work with them, and our first student, Juliana, began attending the tutoring sessions as well.

Rita and Margaret were working full-time hours on the project, but neither of them was paid.

I put many hours in, too, designing flyers and brochures, editing letters and grant applications, organizing events. I wanted to craft an image for Bahia Street that looked professional without being slick. I cranked out amazing things on laser printers at work, since there was no budget for printing. Every penny we raised went to Brazil.

It was amazing how much Rita could do with so little. She expanded the tutoring program to the point where it was as good as any private school. Since the school day in Brazil is only four hours, the girls could then go to public school for a half day and then go to Bahia Street for a half day. Not only did this allow her to admit more students, it improved the public schools.

As the number of girls in the program grew, so too did the number of volunteers in Seattle. I jokingly call Barry “Volunteer Number One,” because he was there all along. Margaret was not technically savvy, so when Barry and Pat and I told her we needed a database, she just nodded and tried to look knowledgeable. The same happened when we launched our first website in 1998.

Margaret still chuckles about Barry and the database. He told her he was bored with computer games, and he thought developing a database would be “fun.” We have over a thousand people in our relational database now, with tens of thousands of records on donations and volunteer activities, and because of Barry, it never cost us anything.

After about five years, Margaret insisted that Barry and I go to Brazil on Bahia Street’s first study tour. It was in the Salvador airport, feeling grubby and exhausted after the long flights from the U.S., that I finally met Rita. I recognized her huge smile from dozens of photographs.

From the windows of our 12-passenger van, I saw the horrific shantytowns where our students live, some in houses made of cardboard and poly tarps. I saw the conditions that turn girls into prostitutes or domestic servants before they’re even teenagers.

At the Bahia Street Center, I saw the solution.

There were fifty girls there, vibrant, happy, excited, and loud. They gave off an aura of self-confidence and assurance. Their artwork and projects covered the walls. They danced and sang and played. The teachers, who all come from shantytowns or rural villages themselves, were proud of what they’d accomplished.

It was the last day of school for them, and the girls put on a program for us. Their excitement was not because school was ending for the year, but because there were visitantes — visitors. Some of the girls’ parents came, too. They seemed shy and overwhelmed.

To this day, I can close my eyes and hear the music and feel the exuberance.

I don’t have any children. I could never work every day with difficult kids in that environment. And despite all I know about Brazil, I’m not a “Brazilophile,” a non-Brazilian with an interest in Brazil. So why have I been passionate about this for so many years?

My goal is empowering women. My work with Bahia Street has done that.

Most of the girls in the program have single mothers. Some of their mothers look barely old enough to have children. In addition to almost no money, they have limited parenting skills. Through education, we keep their daughters from getting pregnant and help them develop self-esteem.

Regardless of whether they go to college or not — and three of the first students have gotten university scholarships — by the time our students reach high school, we’ve already done an enormous amount to break the cycle of poverty in each family.

The Gates Foundation is right across town from me. They’d like to break the cycle of poverty, too, with their billions of dollars. But we have something they don’t have.

Rita and Margaret.

How can the Gates Foundation staff understand the needs of impoverished people? As former bankers and politicians, they’ve never suffered hunger or struggled to stay alive.

Rita came from an impoverished background, and she took her chance for a better life and used it to improve her community. To change the world, we need more amazing, dedicated people like her.

But Margaret’s story is just as amazing. From the very beginning, I knew her as a strong, powerful woman. Yet over the years, she has deliberately given all the organization’s power to Rita and others in the shantytowns. To say she empowers them is reality, not just a buzzword.

All those powerful people at the Gates Foundation could learn a lot from Margaret.

A few weeks ago, I saw Rita again. She had come to the United States for the first time in her life, to celebrate Bahia Street’s tenth anniversary. Like the girls in the school, she is more confident. She is no longer Margaret’s friend in Brazil. She is the driving force behind Bahia Street.

Rita seems much taller now. I introduced her to my friend, Brett, as “a dignitary.” At several events, people gave her standing ovations.

Over Rita’s two-week visit, Margaret served as interpreter and introduced Rita, but her role was that of facilitator, not star. People who have just met Margaret have no idea how much she has done to inspire and mobilize thousands of people and raise tens of thousands of dollars.

Mentorship is one of the biggest parts of the Bahia Street curriculum. Every one of the girls we’ve had in the program has gained confidence and self-esteem. We’re especially proud of our first student, Juliana, currently attending the Federal University of Bahia.

But it’s a little known fact that even before we had even heard of Juliana, Margaret had already empowered two women and changed their lives: A one-in-a-million social activist named Rita. And myself.

For more information about Bahia Street, see the website at www.bahiastreet.org.

It’s confession time (no pun intended). When I was a teenager, I wanted to be a nun.

Most people who know me find this astonishing. Why would I want to be a nun?

The reason is role models. I have two aunts who are Sisters of Providence (in Indiana, not to be confused with the order in Seattle). When I was barely five years old, they were permitted to cast off their restrictive black habits. For most of my life, I’ve known them as empowered women, women who did meaningful work.

Initially, they were school teachers. That and nursing were the careers open to them. But over the years, the world and the church changed. They received advanced degrees. Sister Mary Pat became the liturgical director for a huge Catholic parish in Chicago. They marched in protests and conducted letter-writing campaigns to elected officials. They worked for peace and social justice.

In the 1970’s, they were allowed to travel on vacation, so they visited family members in places like New York, Florida, and Las Vegas. They had an audience with Pope John Paul in Rome and took a cruise to Alaska.

Sister Mary Pat and Sister Mary Julia are in their 80’s now, retired to the “motherhouse” at St. Mary of the Woods, Indiana. I’ve visited the campus many times, with its tree-lined avenues and 19th-century buildings. Located in the backwoods of Indiana, outside Terre Haute, it has a church that is as awe-inspiring as any big city cathedral.

The sisters there have a role model, too. In 1840, Mother Theodore Guerin was about my age. She left civilized France and traveled to the wilderness, which at that time was Indiana. With five companions, she started the Sisters of Providence and opened a school for girls in the woods.

The school became St. Mary of the Woods College, the first liberal arts college for women in the United States. The sisters also expanded their work, opening schools and orphanages across the U.S. and the world.

Mother Theodore was a strong, empowered woman, but she was also very religious. In the years since her death, many people, including my family, prayed to her for intercession. Some of those prayers were answered: On October 15th, she will be canonized as a saint, partly because of two miracles attributed to her.

But the real miracles are not curing cancer or blindness, they are the millions of students who have been educated through Sisters of Providence. They are the foster children who have had a home, and the elderly (including my own grandparents) who have been nursed by the sisters. The miracles are the disenfranchised who have been not only served, but recognized.

Mother Theodore’s mission has been flexible enough to change with the times. Today, the order has a host of forward-thinking projects, such as the White Violet Center for Eco-Justice, teaching about environmental issues and giving children the message that all creation is connected. In 1973, the college launched the Women’s External Degree program, one of the first distance-learning programs in the nation. It was intended to make a college degree possible for women with families. Today, it’s been renamed the Woods External Degree program, and it’s open to men as well. They’ve recently opened Providence Cristo Rey High School, a college-preparatory program that allows economically-disadvantaged students to earn their tuition while gaining job skills at local companies. And they run countless smaller projects, like food banks. adult education, day cares, medical clinics, and services to migrant families.

It’s unbelievable to see what a small group of people, such as Mother Theodore, soon to be “Saint Mother Theodore,” and her five companions, can begin. They had no idea how widely the ripples they created would spread love, justice, and mercy around the world.

I’ve seen it happen, firsthand.

Ten years ago, two women in Brazil, Rita Conceição and Margaret Willson, decided to start a project to break cycles of poverty in the shantytowns. I met Margaret shortly afterwards. Through luck or fate, I was destined to be one of those initial companions.

We started Bahia Street with one student and almost no money. Today, it is a thriving school program for 50 girls in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil, giving them education and hope for their families. It links a worldwide community of hundreds.

We had no idea how widely our ripples would spread, either.

Of all the things I’ve done in life, I’m most proud of Bahia Street. And now I see the connection to my own roots. Through the Sisters of Providence, I have been inspired by strong women with a commitment to social justice. My mother, who considered joining the Sisters of Providence in the 1940’s, decided instead to raise a family and become an artist. She told me I could be anything I wanted, that my gender would not stand in the way.

Now it is my turn to inspire young women to make a difference in the world. All it takes is one small pebble, and the ripples can go on forever.