My six-year old daughter lost her first tooth last week – “No, don’t put it under the pillow, I don’t want the tooth fairy to come, I want to keep my tooth.” She also wants to hide it from the “little mouse” (pequeño ratoncito) because in Mexico, her father’s place of origin, it’s a little mouse that replaces the tooth with money not the tooth fairy.

What strikes me is her belief in magic (tooth fairy, pequeño ratoncito), desire for change (wanting to growing up) and the need to hold onto something sacred (her first tooth) all at the same time.

As I reflect on the work at Girls Action in the last year, especially the opportunity to meet and work with SPARKS during the LIGHT A SPARK campaign, it is the beliefs that my daughter holds innately that come to the surface.

While we were recruiting SPARKS -- women role models from all walks of life and parts of the country -- to participate in an awareness campaign to inspire girls and young women to achieve their potential, the world around us was sparking with massive movements for change. It was the time of political uprisings in the Middle East (Arab Spring), a movement that saw people rallying on the streets to say ‘we’ve had enough’ of undemocratic governments. It’s a message that inspired the Occupy movement to shine light on social and economic inequalities, cut across class and color lines, and spread the slogan “we are the 99%” to question why wealth is concentrated in the hands of the 1%.

The anniversary of the Arab Spring just came and went and as the dust continues to settle, neither the Arab Spring or the Occupy movement are without critique: where are the women, how does the metaphor of “occupation” square with indigenous peoples who have suffered many injustices from decades of colonization, will these movements really bring change or is it just (social) media hype, etc.?

By definition, social movements are complex, diverse, sometimes contradictory, long term efforts that are full of obstacles. Judy Rebick, Girls Action SPARK and leading social activist, journalist and educator said during her webinar presentation “Transforming power” that some people think change movements happen spontaneously but they are usually a culmination of work that has been seeded for many years. What keeps them “moving” is the drive by people with vision; people who believe that change is necessary, possible and even deeply personal.

As the leader of the National Action Committee on the Status of Women (NAC) in the early 1990s, Judy became a prominent figure in the evolving Canadian women’s movement and the struggles to push and question social and personal boundaries. At a Girls Action intergenerational panel last spring, Judy Rebick shared that her hardest challenge as an activist and what makes her feel most proud is her ability to constantly change.

“I realized that all those qualities that made me so successful in the world made me oppressive to other women. That was a really hard lesson for me”.

Her biggest realization, “If you want to be an activist, you want to change the world; you have to be willing to constantly change. What works to change the world in 1970 is very different than what works to change the world in 1990 or 2011. Up until that time I was pretty rigid but because I was fiercely determined for NAC to change, I changed myself, and I’ve been doing that ever since. It turns out that I got much happier.”

Girls Action SPARK Uzma Shakir also has experience in re-inventing herself. As a co-participant with Judy on the Girls Action panel in Toronto, Uzma Shakir talks about the obstacles she faced as a new immigrant and soon after, a new mother in Canada.

When Uzma discovered that her credentials from Pakistan and England were not enough to get into the Canadian foreign service, she weighs her options, “I became a champion for foreigners, not quite foreign service but its services for foreigners”.

Working at the grassroots level she became a spokesperson for the South Asian community in Toronto, and now works on behalf of many communities as the Director of the Office of Equity, Diversity and Human Rights at the City of Toronto.

“One of the positive things about being in Canada is that you actually meet people that you might not otherwise. I had the possibility of building a political identity called South Asian-ness that I didn’t have before, and then I became a woman of colour, and then I became a social justice activist. Imagine the number of women I can connect to now.”

SPARKS Judy Rebick and Uzma Shakir drive home that the road is not easy (for anyone) but with hope and a vision for social change, not losing sight of who you are and who you want to be, anything is possible. It’s remarkably similar to my daughter’s desire to hold onto who she is (symbolized by her baby tooth) while looking to the future (growing up), and believing that anything is possible (even magical). Sometimes we just need to bring those instincts to crave and create change back to the surface, and maybe even onto the streets?

In the next few weeks, watch this space for blogs from SPARKS including Andrea Simpson Fowler and Kristi-Lane Sinclair who reflect on social movements, tell us about their life choices, paths to leadership and inspirations for change.