By Raju Mandhyan
EVEN though I had known the group and its founders for years, I really did not know how being one with them would twist my heart around and turn it into warm marshmallow.
“Sign up for a speaking tour across South East Asia” they said and we will talk about causing and then, thriving through disruption.
Why not, I thought to myself. Do I not, anyway, do that all the time? Do I not work with senior leaders and coach them into surviving and thriving through volatile, uncertain, changing and ambiguous times? Do I not coach senior leaders on how they can manage, engage and motivate a diverse and a changing world all the time?
So I agreed to journey across South East Asia on with a troupe called, Together We Can Change the World or TWCCTW for short.
So after weeks of looking up the countries and their business cultures and looking for stories and scenarios to include in my talks on disruption in the world, I landed in Singapore in the first week of July.
Singapore was our starting point and we were to cover places like Johar Baru, Iskander, Kuala Lumpur, Siem Reap, and Chiang Mai.
In Singapore, the bulk of the conversations among us were about how to speak effectively in public. “Can do, la!” I said to myself.
In Johar Baru, the conversations were about women’s rights and diversity etc., My voice probably won’t add anything to the subject, I thought to myself.
In Kuala Lumpur, Scott Friedman, Rebecca Morgan and Jana Stanfield, pioneers and founders of TWCCTW, sat us all down and asked us what our core purpose and objective was in being with the troupe. The troupe had now added up to 15 speakers from across the world.
Some said they were there to contribute. Others said women’s and children’s issues are a big thing across the world and they’d like to add their two cents worth. One of them mentioned that he was there to work away the guilt that had been accumulated inside of him from having lived a life of his choices and own making. That made sense to me and I added saying that I was there for the learning and the fun. We were to speak at six to eight events and occasions. And, boy, I had not the faintest idea of what would hit me in the next few days and it did.
Besides speaking to business groups, part of the tour included visiting orphanages, schools and refugee centers along the route. A day after our business presentation to crowd of 600 in Kuala Lumpur we walked into a school for refugee children from Afghanistan, Iran, Somalia, Egypt, Syria etc., And, that encounter made me step down from the lectern of my life and out of the spotlight into a world I had viewed from a distance.
The school had scores, no hundreds, of children from the ages of five to 15 who had all come from a background of countries torn apart by war, families devastated by suffering, homes that had burned down to ground. Yet their smiles glowed with aspirations for a world they hadn’t yet experienced. Their eyes blazed with a vision they planned to build with their own two, fragile, hands.
As I stood among them, it dawned on me that we all, once, had similar smiles, blazing visions and a hungering in our spirits like the ones these boys and girls from diverse backgrounds had. The only difference was that during those hungering youthful years most of us had friends and family to support and cheer us. These children had no homes, barely any family, and friends who they had just met. Yet they all stood tall, asked questions, offered points of views, expressed opinions and emanated an aroma of hope and a desire to change not just their own world but the world at large.
For the rest of the journey we visited a few more places and I walked every step flushed with amazement and hope and love that needed to explode out of me. I walked away with sheer admiration and respect for the donors, the charity workers and teachers from across the world supporting orphanages, homes, schools and caring for these children who are bound not to just change the world but heal the world into becoming a better place.
I now trust and know that a single human being cannot do all the good the world needs, but the world needs all the good each one of us can do. And, there are millions of single human beings out there doing good and keeping their young eyes ablaze towards a beautiful tomorrow.
Raju Mandhyan is an author, coach and speaker.
