Small Acts for Big Impact
Small Acts for Big Impact
From popcorn-for-dinner years to moving $500,000 in supplies, Tonya Christofferson proves small acts scale—Snohomish to Nairobi’s Mathare. With Hub N Spoke, she fuels school kits, winter drives, Trauma Reboot Fridays, and even a $10K playground. The impact: dignity, joy, and a community that shows up.
From Snohomish to Africa, local woman serves everyone she meets
By Ellen Hiatt
Moving half a million dollars worth of product to children in her community and across the world to the Mathare slums of Africa seems like a gargantuan task for a single woman. But it’s no different, says Tonya Christofferson, than being a single, divorced and poor mother, feeding her children popcorn for dinner, and giving of her time to someone in more need than herself.
“You can’t carry the weight of the world on your shoulders,” Christofferson remembers hearing from her mother. “Well!” She smiles and says, “Nothing’s changed!”
When I first met her in person seven years ago, we were standing in a Starbuck’s parking lot and I was handing over a couple of old, dusty suitcases, so musty I was almost embarrassed to offer them. She was going to load them up with soccer balls, and cloth sanitary napkins and “dignity kits” for young women and girls in Tanzania. She and her friends had met in her living room to sew the napkins and assemble the kits.
I found her first on Facebook, where she was a friend of a friend I actually knew personally. On Facebook, as everywhere, the hum of this world is sometimes overwhelming. The chatter of opinions and emotions from every corner of my universe can come to feel as though the problems of life, my own and others, are too big to tackle. But Christoffersen was different. She was positive, but not Pollyanna. She was productive, but not pushy. In short, I found her inspiring.
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Christoffersen makes a trip to Africa multiple times a year, channeling donations towards schools and playgrounds, and supporting communities who have a poverty of resources, but abundance of spirit.
“I think, in this weird way, walking around the Mathare slums with 800,000 people who have literally nothing, I find such peace. I love the joy and harmony. It’s like my safe place, you know? I’m not dealing with lying and judging and hate. I mean, sure they have it; they’re human beings. But it’s not obvious.” Civility is the norm, and it creates an environment of harmony, she said.
Her compulsion to help people isn’t isolated to Africa. It’s everywhere she goes. In her retirement she’s even busier, collecting school supplies from stores like Fred Meyer’s, and from her friends.
“So I’m able to give generously to CASA, who has a whole bunch of children coming in, and then to the McKinney-Vento program,” she said. CASA serves children with court-appointed advocates, and McKinney-Vento is a statutory mandate for schools to help schoolchildren impacted by homelessness. “I have 5,000 brand new pencils in the garage, and a tote full of glue sticks. I’m always, constantly moving it. Right now I have school supplies for the shelter. If Darrington Food Bank called me, I would take them stuff.”
In the winter, she runs a drive for cold weather gear, like coats and gloves. And every Friday she serves as a co-leader for “Trauma Reboot,” a collection of women who have been in and out of prison and sex trafficking and suffering domestic violence.
“They’re the same kind of women that I serve internationally. They’re hard women; they’ve had a rough life,” she said. One of the women told her that at the age of eight, her mother pimped her out.
“You have to remember that this stuff is not only in Africa or Nepal or Peru or Spain. It’s happening right here,” she said. “It’s hard to know that a mother would sell her eight-year-old daughter for sex. It’s so hard to talk about. It gets really heavy. And I know there are times when I just have to be by myself and process it.”
That’s when she goes on hikes, or takes her granddaughter out to the woods and teaches her the names of plants. My first conversations with Christoffersen, before I’d ever met her in person, were about my desire to take my family on hikes, but I didn’t know the best places. She invited me to go with her, as she does with nearly everyone she meets. She gives in small ways and in big.
“When I was first divorced, I was poorer than a church mouse. My kids and I slept in the same bed. I couldn’t afford power. I went to the food bank. We ate popcorn for dinner. But I still did stuff for other people,” she said. “Nothing’s changed… I can just do it in a bigger way.”
The bigger way today is through her non-profit, Hub N Spoke. It’s intentionally small, she explained, even though there are offers from other, larger groups to collaborate. Because the resources come from her friends and her network, she is disinclined to grow beyond what she can manage herself. Her integrity is the real currency she leverages when she asks for help.
Her friends joyfully and willingly give to her mission because it fulfills their own need to leave a positive impact in this world. But they also give, she contends, because they know she will follow through and keep her word. One friend, she said, won’t ever get on an airplane to go to Africa with her, but she and her husband are donating $10,000 toward a playground.
“Do you know what that’s going to do to the Mathare slums, having $10,000 worth of playground equipment?” she asked. “Those kids are not going to know what to do! It’s going to be an amazing thing.”
In Africa, she said, each tribe has its own cultural values and ways of thinking about the world. One might practice polygamy and the other not. One of her African colleagues she works with to deliver resources said she was selfish to not be polygamous! Cultural norms are accepted and practiced as though they are law, differently from tribe to tribe, just as people take drastically different political points of view as though they’re the only truth, she said.
What’s most important, she agreed, is the underlying humanity of everyone, and how we can be a positive part of people’s lives.
“Honestly, I love what I get to do.
“Tonya’s stories inspired me to get involved — not just emotionally, but actively. It’s important we work together to make life easier for others.”— Elaine Hofstadter
Tonya Christoffersen started Hub N Spoke to provide essential resources to vulnerable people at home and abroad. Learn more at hubnspokenonprofit.org.
