On Jan. 14, 2015, as Duston Hayward rode his bicycle to work in San Diego, an 18-wheeler took a right on red and wiped him out. It was a hit that could have killed him, yet Hayward managed to crawl away from the accident with fractures to his ribs, pelvis and wrist.

Hayward is a computer scientist by profession and is currently working as a systems engineer. He missed three months of work completely, and then it took another two months to get back to it full time and resume most of his normal activities. “There are still some things that I don’t do. Like I don’t commute to work on bicycle anymore,” he said.

The accident shocked his heart out of rhythm—but managed to change it forever. He said his brush with mortality made him thankful for each day, and gave him a more positive outlook on life. He started to advise friends and family not to sweat the small stuff, and managed to have deep, meaningful conversations with his youngest son, who was a senior in high school at the time of the accident, about how to change perspective on negative feelings and events. “I really started to become thankful for what was going on. Thankful for being alive and really changing to have an even more positive outlook on life than I had before,” Hayward said.

He was further inspired by a woman he saw on TV who had been in an accident a decade before, who wanted to replace her negative memory of that day with a positive one, so she ran a marathon. He started an annual 5K walk he called Celebrate Life’s Beauty as a fundraiser. The first year, around the holidays in 2015, Hayward and his friends and family—about 50 people in all—raised $2,000 for the Challenged Athletes Foundation, which supports people with disabilities who want to participate in sports. For the second and third year, the walk raised money for the Butterfly Effect.

Hayward learned about the Butterfly Effect from his wife, Brenda, and son, Parker, who were connected to the Wahl family through the kids’ school. He decided he wanted to be part of the micro-philanthropy movement that counts on generosity being contagious locally and around the world.

“It was a perfect match. I had never really met Tasha before, and when I told her what I was doing, she wanted to be part of it. When she told me what she was doing, I wanted to be part of it,” he said. “I liked the concept of the Butterfly Drops. I liked the concept of the butterfly walls.”

Hayward would go on to organize six Butterfly Drops and a butterfly stencil mural inside the Embassy Suites in downtown in San Diego. The drops supported causes such as Gordon College’s (Mass.) baseball team and the Princess Project, which provides prom dresses to girls who can’t afford to buy them.

Hayward said he’d always thought about giving back, perhaps after he’d retired, but his accident shifted his priorities. “I started to search out people who inspire people in general,” he said. “I’m continuing to search for that and continuing to spread the word of how wonderful life is. I did not have that complete appreciation before, so it really has woken me up. I really believe that I’ve had a second chance, I’m on my second life, because the odds are I should have been dead that day.”

 

Patti Sokol, Adobe Sr. solutions consultant, was sitting in San Francisco’s famously terrible traffic, wondering what she could use as a theme for the project for CC @MAX, a hands-on, pre-conference lab she teaches at Adobe’s annual creative event. Then, as it does for so many others, a butterfly appeared just when she needed it.

“Waiting at a stoplight, I saw a beautiful butterfly wall installation on the side of a boarded up post office in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district. The butterfly graphic with the words ‘Be the Change You Want to See in the World’ struck me as a perfect combination of creativity plus philosophy—and a great potential project that my students could use to express their creativity and incorporate the new Creative Cloud product features that they learn during the CC @MAX lab,” Patti said.

She went back to the office and through a little research, found The Butterfly Effect and read up on contagious generosity and Butterfly Drops. She was delighted and knew that providing butterflies to her students would add greater meaning to their projects. Not only could they gain new software skills, but they could also facilitate giving in the process. The students, all adult creative professionals, come to Adobe MAX to be inspired, to enhance their skills, and to learn new features of Adobe Creative Cloud. They were provided with a Photoshop template of the butterfly and a creative brief.

Patti found help from a longtime Adobe partner, Roland DGA, which makes a printer that would print and cut the vinyl sticker students would affix to the wooden butterflies. Patti was able to use the butterflies at two events in 2017, reaching 150 different students. For each butterfly, Adobe contributed $50 and the Butterfly Effect contributes $50; the total $100 will go to the charity of the finder’s choice. “Part of the fun of contagious generosity is seeing where they are dropped, who will find them, and which charity will be selected,” Patti said.

The feedback from her students was formidable—they appreciated doing something that was practical and would help to give back. “I’m very lucky to work for a company like Adobe, which encourages employees to create positive change in the world around them by supporting causes through donations and volunteer work. Butterfly Effect resonated for me because I believe that our small, individual actions collectively make an impact on the world around us. As part of the creative brief, I asked the students to express the Butterfly Effect theme of, ‘Be the change you wish to see in the world.’ For my butterfly I chose the theme of kindness. Simple acts of kindness can have a large effect on the world,” Patti said.

Get involved! Learn how to bring a Butterfly to your community to help a cause near to your heart.