Summary

| Day 9 - 11 |
THE FIFTH STEP
is a
BIG LEAP
in your inner potential and an opportunity to
INSPIRE AND CHANGE LIVES
by
TURNING AROUND A DISTRESSED SCHOOL
in
DHARAMSHALA
City of The Dalai Lama that personifies kindness

Chapter Theme

Ever received a complement as rare and enriching as Thank you for changing my life?

Often, the process of earning this complement provides an unimaginable leap in one's own journey of transformation. This chapter is about the profound joy of changing someone's life against all odds and, in the process, experiencing growth in your inner potential.

What makes this pursuit even more meaningful is the place where you take this journey – Dharamshala – a Buddhist town with thousands of Tibetan refugees. Here you experience the deepest layer of volunteerism, where your help isn't limited to teaching English or donating money. Rather, you leave a lasting impact on a segment that remains dependable for life – Tribal Children from mountains with special education needs, majority of whom fail to survive schooling and are often left to do menial jobs or in worse cases, beg as their final resort.

And, your task is to save the future of 40+ kids studying in a distressed school requiring an urgent turnaround, in the absence of which it may not sustain itself beyond 2015. You drive its transformation, not as a volunteer or a donor, but as one of the Interim Co-Owners equipped with the authority, resources and funds to make a long-lasting contribution. The catch is you will only have three days and a legacy to leave behind.

Chapter Specifics

The chapter begins in Dharamsala with you meeting the Chapter Navigators – a few individuals who have successfully brought instrumental changes to people's lives through a unique mix of community empowerment, education and entrepreneurship. Since bringing a lasting change is a big mandate, they play a crucial role in enabling you to live up to your own expectations.

You start with a Project Briefing at the school, as part of which you assume the role of a Co-Owner of the school and start with the biggest question: Why is the school facing a potential foreclosure by 2015 and what can save the future of the 40+ kids studying in the school?

After the orientation, you draft and implement actionable plans using compassion and your unique resources as a guide – this might include establishing new classrooms, building a library, reducing absenteeism through incentives, training the staff, connecting the school with volunteers, or increasing the student base. You've only got three days, but that's more time than it seems when everybody's on the same page working with compassion. This is an emotionally intense process, where a seemingly impossible timeline would soon fall in place and three days would seem enough to rebuild the future of a school, and those of its current and future students.