The Dalai Lama Fellows - Playing the Compassion Games

By Marty Krasney

Today in Atlanta, because of a Spelman College senior’s compassionate and innovative work as a Dalai Lama Fellow, teen moms are acquiring life skills and completing high school.

At a factory established by the first two Dalai Lama Fellows from Egypt, previously unemployable women in Cairo earn their living in textile manufacturing and recognized their rights as workers and citizens.

Two Asian-American Dalai Lama Fellows from New York University created “Student to Student” to help under-resourced, low-income middle schoolers in New York, mostly Latino and African American, compete successfully for admission to the city’s elite, specialized public high schools.

Because a Fellow from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences in Mumbai, India, took on the issues of caste and gender equity, there are girls now playing cricket at recess alongside boys for the first time, instead of being required to stay back and clean the lunchroom.

And two Fellows from Ashesi University College in Berekuso, Ghana, established “Adesua Ye” (which translates as “Education is Paramount”), to tutor and coach adults in English literacy and computational skills. The Fellows are also working to build a community library out of recycled plastic bottles.

Dalai Lama Fellows is a dynamic global community of compassionate, ethical and effective social innovators, personally authorized by the Fourteenth Dalai Lama and dedicated to building a new mindset and modeling behaviors that will enable us to live harmoniously on this planet and build a world that works for all. Our core values reflect those of the planet itself, and of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama -- Interdependence, Integrity and Resilience.

Since 2011, we have selected 65 Fellows, who represent two-dozen nationalities. We immerse them in an intensive curriculum, extending and enhancing their perspectives, skills and tools in the realms of self-knowledge, cooperation across differences and designing ethical systems. We guide them in the delivery of mentored, original and exemplary, year-long projects – more than fifty of them throughout the world – addressing fundamental, interconnected global challenges: environmental devastation, poverty, violence, gender inequities and cross-cultural hostilities. And we forge the Fellows into a lifelong learning community of engaged compassion.

At Dalai Lama Fellows, we focus on three fundamental questions.

1. How to spark, and evaluate, a shift in mindset and behavior that works for all of us;
2. How to balance love, power, and interdependence in the global community;
3. How best to support each other as ethical, contemplative and effective human beings.

Our methodology comprises curriculum, coaching, community-building, embracing diversity and compassionate action -- all intended to help the Fellows to know themselves more deeply, to think and design systemically, and to dedicate themselves, and inspire others, to make a difference.

We started with contemplative and courageous college students, working so far in 24 nations on five continents. Our vision, however, is to broaden our reach to any social innovator, anywhere. We anticipate adding new Fellows every year and are scaling our reach and impact through publications, presentations, social media and partnerships.

We are delighted to be collaborating this year with Compassion Games, which runs from September 11 to 21. We will be fielding a Dalai Lama Fellows team that starts with Vivienne Walz, a 2014 Dalai Lama Fellow from McGill University in Montreal; Azza Cohen, a 2014 Dalai Lama Fellow from Princeton University; and Ty Diringer and Rachel Manning, respectively 2013 and 2014 Dalai Lama Fellows from Oberlin College. We expect to add Fellows in India, Africa and elsewhere in North America. We share with Compassion Games a belief that unless we can work together to build a world that works for all of us, it is increasingly evident that it will not work for any of us.

For more information on Dalai Lama Fellows please visit www.dalailamafellows.org

Marty Krasney, an educator and organizational executive, was named the first Executive Director of Dalai Lama Fellows in May 2010. His prior work in the not-for-profit sector includes serving as the first director of the Aspen Institute Seminars, the founding president of American Leadership Forum, executive director of The Coalition for the Presidio Pacific Center and program director of the National Humanities Series.