Above Ann Medlock’s desk hangs a small sign that reads, “Some blessings wear a hell of a disguise.” Ann acknowledges with a laugh that some very disguised blessings led her to find her place of passionate service as the founder and president of the Giraffe Project, a nonprofit organization inspiring people to “stick their neck out for the common good.” Ann describes the years that led to her calling as one long process of doors closing in her face, “watching and hearing them slam while knowing that meant somehow another door would open. It was almost like being corralled. Each time I’d catch my breath and say, ‘Oh I get it, I’m supposed to go that way.’”

A series of doors banged shut on Ann twenty-five years ago. Her business partnership with her husband and her marriage ended in a nasty divorce, leaving her deeply depressed, without home or income, and with two small children to care for. In desperation Ann took a yoga class and, inspired by her yoga teacher’s serenity, immersed herself in yoga and meditation. Ann refound her spiritual center, felt called to service, and passed on her healing by running a hotline and creating an organization for abandoned and abused women.

After another business ended—“Slam!”—she moved to New York City with her children and worked for a magazine on a promotion called the Giraffe Society. When the magazine went bankrupt—“Slam!”—Ann realized that the idea for the promotion was too good to let go, so she renamed it the Giraffe Project and began writing scripts for radio about everyday heroes and heroines sticking their necks out for the common good.

The project blossomed, driven by Ann’s energy and passion. Since 1984, the Giraffe Project has designated more than 900 Giraffes, awarding certificates to the Giraffes and placing their stories in hundreds of local and national print and broadcast media. Giraffes, ranging from 7- to 97-year-olds, take on pollution, homelessness, corporate unethical practices, illness, drug and alcohol abuse, and a host of other issues. They have risked rejection, jail, and peer ridicule. “Real, life-serving change gets fixed in the social fabric by thousands of ordinary people doing what is, for them, extraordinary stretching. We want to stop people from acting like ostriches.” The organization’s latest project is The Heroes Program, a story-based K-12 curriculum that teaches courageous compassion and active citizenship.

Ann is grateful for the opportunity to gather all of her life skills into one project for service. “I am very concerned about the health of the body politic. I think we’re like that frog who’s been dropped in water that’s slowly getting hotter and hotter, but can’t register that it’s boiling to death. We’ve been absorbing social and political toxins for so long that we’re losing sight of the fact that we’re being poisoned. We need some antidotes, quick, and the way to offer them is to use media, which are the most powerful distribution avenues that have ever existed in humanity. Look at all of the ways now that we have to pass along information and ideas and concepts to people. We’ve allowed these avenues to be filled up with garbage, but the avenues themselves are still excellent. If we begin loading these avenues to people’s hearts and minds with real life stories that are healing and antidotal, we can recover our health as a society.”

Ann believes service is imperative at this point in our culture’s history. “Compassionate service is the cornerstone of every spiritual tradition. Anybody can see that rampant greed and personal aggrandizement are putting us in a very bad place. If you are concerned about the fact that our kids are killing themselves and each other, with drugs, with violence, with bulimia, doing things that destroy the possibilities of their own futures, you have to realize that. Our children are turning away from us in any way they can because they see that what this society is offering them is meaningless. We have to create a society that has meaning, and that offers our kids meaningful lives.”

Ann, now 66, wakes up grateful each day for her work, which takes place in a small house on Whidbey Island, a short ferry ride from Seattle. She and her husband, Executive Director John Graham, spend a typical day creating a curricula for high school students called The Giraffe Heroes Program, working with her staff of six full-time employees, writing profiles of new Giraffes for the media, fund-raising, fielding emails, screening nominations for new Giraffes, working with editors, producers and writers who are looking for stories, and having ongoing conversations with a nationwide network of character educators.

Ann credits the work with challenging her to be braver in her own life. “Everybody works on their own issue, and mine is courage. The Giraffes are a constant inspiration. When my own knees start to fold: are we going to make payroll, are we going to make the printing date, will we get the materials to the kids on time?—there is so much that could scare me right back into getting a nice, sane, job—I see the courageous work the Giraffes are doing, and my knees don’t feel so weak anymore.”

Her hectic schedule has simplified Ann’s spiritual life. “For a long time my spirituality has been two words: 'Yes', and 'thanks.' Meditation now has to fit in the cracks; the ferry ride is about the perfect length for a nice meditation. I consider ‘Yes’ and ‘Thanks’ meditations; they’re quickies, but they get me back in touch with spirit. I’ve recently doubled my spirituality to four words; I’ve added, ‘God bless.’”

Ann is concerned about the scar tissue most of us carry over our hearts, the perceived necessity to protect ourselves from hurt in a risk-averse culture. “If you open up and show your concern, somebody could hurt you. Well,” she says in her no-nonsense, powerful way, “The only way to avoid risk is to be dead. I think a lot of us have chosen to be dead while we are still walking around breathing. We talk in our materials with high school kids about becoming a zombie, and I think a lot of people in our society have made that choice. Being fully alive is dangerous, because you can get hurt, but that’s what we’re here for: we’re here to live fully and to take every chance that’s involved in doing that. It takes courage, because you have to reach out of your own self-protective shell to express your compassion. It’s not enough to just feel bad for people. You have to do something.”

There’s a Giraffe in everyone, says Ann. “Just start with the smallest action you’re comfortable with. Get involved in something organized where you’re not the only one. Get out of the cultural soup that says you don’t count and nothing you do can affect this mess. We’re overwhelmed constantly by a culture that tells us all the problems are huge and unsolvable. If you pick up a tiny corner of the problem and see that you’re solving it, you’re not going to buy that anymore. You’re going to have much more faith in yourself as an effective presence in the world, and much more faith in your society as a place where things can change. I want us all to feel the dignity we get from seeing that something that we do matters.”

Ann’s advice for finding one’s place in service actually comes from her kitchen. “The basic cooking recipe in my kitchen is ‘What have you got?’ That’s what you make a meal from. When I was looking for my path I asked myself that question, and I realized I had communication skills. I started looking at the best way to use my gifts. Everybody has something. You could be the best talker around, you might have an enormous ability with your hands, you may be able to fix anything. You need to look at every gift you’ve got and ask, ‘How can I use that to serve?’”

Ann is not naïve about the suffering around her. She has learned to avoid compassion fatigue by holding onto the image of being in a rowboat in rough water. “A lot of people are drowning, and if you’re in the boat you don’t want to get in the water with them. You want to help them get in the boat. If you let yourself be pulled into the water, everybody drowns. You just can’t do that. It’s like on the airplanes: if the air masks come down, you put yours on before you help someone else, because if you don’t you’re going to die and you won’t be able to help. It’s very important for people to be healthy and centered. The more present you are and the steadier that you are on your own pins, the easier it is to help people without getting consumed by their suffering. But, at the same time, you can’t wait until you’re perfect to act. You sort of rub your stomach and pat your head at the same time.”

Ann laughs when she admits that she lives by the saying over her desk, “Some blessings wear a hell of a disguise.” “I know sometimes I sound like a blooming idiot around these cynical little mottoes like, ‘If you can keep your head, you just don’t understand the situation.’ I have been trained as an intellectual and every once in a while, I have to laugh at how intellectually disreputable my operations are, because a proper intellectual runs on despair. I guess that makes me an outcast from the intelligentsia. But you know, I’ve got years and decades of experience now and it’s all blessings, all of it. Every last ounce, a blessing.”