Everyday People, Extraordinary Leadership

CHAPTER 3Inspire a Shared Vision

IT WAS LATE one evening when Diann Grimm experienced a perplexing “aha moment!”—“I am living someone else's dream!” Having recently retired from a long career in public education, Diann was working as a curriculum developer for an early childhood education publisher. She brought a lot to the job, and though the work was important, it didn't feel personally meaningful. So she asked herself a poignant question: “What is my dream?” Wrestling inside herself to find an answer would set her on a new path: “I want to continue to foster education and learning, but to do so in an innovative way.” But how was she going to make this dream a reality?

Over the years on her summer breaks, Diann had participated in many volunteer projects, most of them centered on early childhood education in developing countries. She felt especially called to Nepal, where she'd spent a summer working with Bhupendra (Bhupi) Ghimire, the executive director of Volunteers Initiative Nepal (VIN). Diann decided to reach out to her old friend to see if her aspirations and his might come together in ways that would be meaningful to both of them.

Her timing was serendipitous, as Bhupi was planning to bring VIN to Nepal's Okhaldhunga district, where he himself had grown up. This underdeveloped area is far from tourist trails, and its residents, who depend on subsistence farming and ...