As my friend approached even closer, he noticed that the man was picking up starfish that had washed up on the beach, and, one at a time, he was throwing them back into the water.

My friend was puzzled.  He approached the man and said.  "Good evening, friend.  I was wondering what you are doing."

"I'm throwing these starfish back into the ocean.  You see, it's low  tide right now and all of these starfish have been washed up onto the shore. If I don't throw them back into the sea, they'll die up here  from lack of oxygen."

"I understand," my friend replied, "but there must be thousands of starfish on this beach.  You can't possibly get to all of them. There  are simply too many.  And don't you realize this is probably happening  on hundreds of beaches all up and down this coast.  Can't you see that  you can't possibly make a difference?"

The local native smiled, bent down and picked up yet another starfish, and as he threw it back into the sea, he replied, "Made a difference  to that one!"

There are millions of little things we can do, without taking much effort, to make this world a better place.