After preparing for a couple days before all the students arrived, the South Asian students presented on their cultures for the international students. You can read more here, and see a few student interviews here, beginning with Olga!
Monica
Mohammad
Rohini
Kultwisiso
Shilpi
After flying in from across the US, South Africa, Nepal and India, the 2018 Leadership Collective kicked off with our largest group of learners yet! The 33 learners spent today at orientation at Dr. Reddy’s Leadership Academy in Hyderabad. The day began with lots of ice breakers and concluded with a special speaker– Mr. Srikanth Bolla. Mr. Bolla, the Director & CEO of BOLLANT Industries, shared his thoughts and experience on resilience, including the role of compassion and persistence.
For blogs from the 2017 Leadership Collective, check out the Daily Collective.
This is my Mom and my Dad. If I was to tell you this out of context, without any retrospect of the previous four nights staying with a home family, the idea would be that I was an orphan taken in or adopted.
I am both.
Before I came into their home, I was an orphan. Not literally but in my mentality with my own family. I’ve always felt I was the black sheep, different, alone, alien. Coming into Madurai, I am adopted. Adopted into a culture, into a family I’ve never known, a family I will never forget. I am an orphan in the way I’ve felt abandoned, even if it is only in my mind. Yet these four days have shown me a level of support I could’ve never experienced at my own home. They will always be my Ama and my Apa. When people ask me where I come from I now have four faces to show them. Two my own by blood and two that embody what I invision as an ideal of parenting and the feeling of belonging. It was missing until now. A piece of me will always be in India.