Sometimes I’m not sure if I’m an optimist or a pessimist. Almost daily I am disappointed in humanity. I also am witness to acts of love and empathy that give me faith in humanity on a daily basis. My faith and disappointment are hard to reconcile. In trying to do so, I have made a few observations. The first is realizing that my faith is almost always in individuals, while my disappointment is almost always in groups. Secondly, I have noticed that my disappointment is almost always in the present, and my hope is almost always in the future. Most importantly, I’ve realized I have to cultivate hope, whereas disappointment comes easily.

To turn hope into action, I must look at the reality of the present, but not get not get bogged down in what makes the present seem hopeless. Instead look for the individuals where hope lies. And remember that anything I do to support them or support positive change in the world will make tomorrow a little more hopeful.

The things that make me sick for the fate of humanity are loud and violent, the top stories on the evening news. The things that give me hope are quiet and broadcast after the weather, if at all. Mister Rogers, quoting his mother, said, “Always, look for the helpers.” He’s right. They’re there. Unfortunately, you do have to look for them.

I constantly require refills of hope. It’s as if I have a vessel to hold my hope, but it’s not a bowl. It’s a colander. If I’m not careful, if I don’t seek out refills, or if I don’t look for the helpers, my vessel will go dry.

I have to have hope to function. I mean that personally, but I also mean that professionally. I work for a nonprofit. If I didn’t have hope, how could I believe that we could make any kind of difference? I couldn’t. Luckily, my job itself provides sources of hope in example after example of acts of love. Part of my job at Foundation Beyond Belief (FBB) is collecting reports from local humanist, atheists, and nontheist community service teams across the country. Sometimes I get a report of a team getting together to clean up litter in their community. Sometimes it’s a team that goes the extra mile to create a fun meal when it’s their turn to provide a dinner at their local LGBT youth center. Sometimes it’s people going out to buy pizzas as soon as a hurricane starts to die down because they know a local shelter didn’t get their meal delivery during the storm. Almost daily, I start my workday with stories of human connection.

Stories of human connection are an important part of keeping my container of hope filled. But looking for the helpers isn’t enough when we are talking about enacting change. An important part of keeping that vessel of hope full is seeing results.

A stark example comes from the year I spent in Ghana working with people in the camps of alleged witches. Taken as a whole, the situation is unbearably depressing. These women are accused of witchcraft often for nothing more than appearing in another’s dream. My disappointment in humanity is embodied in the communities that are able to violently cast out women who have be a part of their fabric their whole lives—for decades—without empirical evidence or apparent empathy. The fact that the government has repeatedly tried to close the camps, leaving these women more vulnerable with nowhere to live, rather than pursue strategies to end the accusations only adds to my frustration and disappointment. Now, the government has passed laws to protect women from violence stemming from witchcraft accusations. Yet, the women often don’t know their rights, and there is a power struggle happening between traditional tribal legal systems and the modern federal legal system, meaning the laws are rarely enforced. The situation feels irredeemable—without hope.

Take the reintegration project that the Humanist Service Corps (HSC)—the international service program of FBB—worked on with our local partner, Songtaba. The project helps women leave the camp and go home if they so desire. However, the stigma of being an alleged witch is enormous. The longer a woman lives in the camp, the stronger that stigma grows. If she goes home without careful preparation in the community, the likelihood that she will be re-accused and re-exiled is high. The community is afraid of letting a dangerous witch back into their community and about letting the stigma of a witch rub off on them. So, what is there to be done? Where do you even start?

But there is hope.

Songtaba and the HSC started by determining if any women even wanted to go home. Every time the government has tried to close the camps, the women themselves have been the loudest voice of opposition. All the same,we met some. Not all women want to go home, but many do. That was the first success. Then, from that list of women, we visited their home communities to see if there was any hope for them to return. In some cases, it didn’t look possible—at least not at that time. But we were able to identify twenty women that both wanted to go home and had home communities that looked promising. That was the second success.

Then we started going to the communities themselves. We met and debated with the chiefs and the families. We helped them prepare to welcome the woman home. We worked with the woman herself to make sure she had the skills and initial capital to start a small livelihood for herself. (The home and livelihood are to ensure that she is not perceived as burden, which would raise the likelihood of re-accusation.) Each woman we tried to reintegrate required multiple visits to and conversations with each community. Sometimes we arrived at a community and found that we’d lost ground. Still, when I left Ghana, we had successfully reintegrated fifteen women. That’s a huge result. Importantly, we are changing the attitudes and actions of the group, by having conversations with individuals.

Each of these steps came with a little more hope, hope that provides fuel to take the next steps. I do believe that it is possible that these camps can close—not because of a government edic, but because the accusations will stop, and there would be no need for them anymore. That won’t happen today, but it also won’t happen without action today with hope for the future. And, for me anyway, hope for the future grows from the results of actions today.

If I am to have any chance to make a difference, my attitude has to be, “we can’t solve this today, but what can we do today so that it can be solved tomorrow?” That has to be my attitude, knowing full-well that the problem probably can’t be solved tomorrow either. Yet whatever change we are able to enact tomorrow will bring us another step closer to solving it. I can’t change the present, but I can change the future. That is at the heart of hope.