One year ago we launched Small Forces, inspired by our guiding principle that people and organizations working at a grassroots level can make a bigmpact on their communities. It’s our mission to amplify their voices with one of the most important modern tools: a professional video story.

Since then, we’ve traveled across the country, and world, to find and tell these stories of optimism, hard work, and success in the face of insurmountable challenges.

Today, we still believe Small Forces Make Big Change. We have seen it time and time again. We feel lucky and grateful to meet the people who embody this motto, and are uplifted by their courage and action.

We look to Charles Lee, founder of That’s My Child, who turned his hot dog business into a life of serving his community in Montgomery, AL, and now helps hundreds of kids with mentorship, after school programs, and more.

We feel the power of Paradise City Dragon Boat, a team of breast cancer survivors in Northampton, MA coming together to support each other, and their own physical health.

There’s CJ, teaching his photography skills to inmates at Cook County Jail.

Gina, a mom advocating for her children, and all children with Rare and Undiagnosed diseases through the Rare & Undiagnosed Network.

High school coaches engaging their athletes in conversations about standing up against sexual assault.

These are just a few of the many examples, and all of them are on our site smallforces.org.

We have so many inspiring stories in store for our second year, as well as new initiatives we can’t wait to tell you about. If you want to be the first to learn about those, please sign up for our newsletter at smallforces.org.

In the meantime, thank you for following along in our first year. We hope you’ve been as inspired as we have to be a small force for big change in our world.