Official Website of Chanelle Carver

There’s a particular moment in my life that I believe was the first time I was confronted with my purpose. It was sometime during 1992. I was seven years old and home with dad one day when he had a nosebleed and required my assistance to help him stop it. No one else was home so I had to step up to the plate and take action. It’s not like I wasn’t regularly reading the medical book anyway. That’s what I did as a curious, bright-eyed, nurturing 7-year old girl living in Harlem.

But at that moment, I knew helping people, being a healer or even a teacher, is what I was destined to do. That was the day I made a commitment to myself and my parents that I would change the world. I didn’t know exactly how, but I just knew it would if I believed.

It all started when I was just a child in preschool, serving as the “mother of the classroom” and peer counselor to the students, and, surprisingly, an adviser to relatives 10 years my senior. The latter was very puzzling to me as an adolescent. As certain events unfold in my life it all begins to make sense. I’m an old soul, and I’ve always felt that way. But now I really own it.

During my senior year at Babson College, where I graduated in 2007 with a Bachelor of Science in Business Management focusing in organization development, organizational behavior, and quantitative methods, I completed a human rights activist project to educate the community about poverty and adult illiteracy in Massachusetts. Such a wonderful course interwoven into this business school’s curriculum. After all, business isn’t all about profit margins and economies of scale.

This experience fueled a passion for social change so deep within my spirit that I went above and beyond what was required of the project, completing a self-published activist guide, analyzing years of data on the relationship between poverty and education and race, and partnering with the public service center on campus to host a book drive. Then, in December 2006, I took my first big step forward in to entrepreneurship by founding of a community benefit / nonprofit organization with a mission to improve adult education and alleviate poverty worldwide through advocacy, research, and service.

Using our blog as an advocacy tool, we were able to help a nonprofit secure thousands of dollars in medical supplies to benefit the impoverished in Swaziland, Africa. This was an eye-opening experience.

For nearly ten years I’ve been involved with the non-profit sector I have worked, professionally and on a volunteer basis, with several organizations and even a few overseas. They include:

• Adoption & Foster Care (AFC) Mentoring
• Amazing Kids!
• Big Brothers, Big Sisters of Mass Bay
• Catholic Charities Community Services
• Collective Lens
• Literacy ‘n’ Poverty Project (this is the social initiative I started)
• Pleasant Valley Library
• Taproot Foundation
• The HUSH Foundation
• United Way of Dutchess County
• The Women for a Change Foundation
• Women’s Initiative for Self Employment
• See examples of consulting projects and professional experiences here.

And then, something happened that changed my life…

Several of my family members died. Cause of death ranged from varying preventable diseases to a tragic car accident. This was very challenging for me as it brought up thoughts and emotions I hadn’t felt in a long time regarding my own father’s death in 1995. I could not believe what was happening to my family. Let me tell you, my world was rocked. ROCKED to the core…

I needed time to grieve and sort out this beautiful, mysterious and sometimes tragic thing we call life. I felt stuck, uninspired and plain ole tired. But I couldn’t stop moving forward.

I realized that I was not living enough for today. I was acting on some dreams while others remained tightly closed in a bud upon my subconscious. It was time for change.

So I started my first socially conscious, for-profit business, and continued my efforts with the social initiative Literacy ‘n’ Poverty Project. I became more spiritual than I’ve ever been. I eliminated limiting beliefs I didn’t even know I had (still working on this). I started living life from a place of abundance. No more excuses. It’s go time. The journey continues…