I’m happy to share this guest post about yesterday’s CLA site visit by my fellow CLA particiapant Mike Rodriguez. Thanks for contributing your thoughts here, Mike, and a special hello to his family who is reading this blog to follow along on our journey.
Abundance vs scarcity and the Amazing Sonal
by Mike Rodriguez
Close your eyes.
Close your eyes and understand we are one.
Close your eyes and suspend your judgment.
Close your eyes and forgive.
Close your eyes and remember, persuasion starts with self-love.
Close your eyes and oversimplify yourself, like a kid asking for a toy at the store, life is not as complicated as we make it out to be.
Close your eyes and hold the hand of those next to you. Close your eyes and become one.
Yesterday (Tuesday) the 2018 Civic Leadership Academy (CLA) fellowship met with Sonal Kappor, the founder and Executive Director of the Protsahan India Foundation. Sonal is a grassroots community organizer who according to her bio is “one of the youngest social entrepreneurial women in India to lead an international non-profit.” Sonal has spoken at TED events and addressed audiences around the world regarding the problems facing the developing world. Sonal has a particular focus on Indian kids who have experienced diverse childhood traumas.
Before we arrived at Protsahan, the CLA cohort meandered through the streets of India via our four small bus transports. We zigzagged through busy side streets as our Old Delhi drivers tried to figure out how to navigate a terrain that seemed even to confuse and disorient them. We were happy to get lost in a sea of traffic –where vehicles are separated by centimeters — because it gave us the chance to take in the Indian culture from a visual perspective.
When we arrived at Protsahan, Sonal quickly took charge of the group. After taking off our shoes Fellows were invited to enter a makeshift room on the roof of a small building and to join 20 Indian girls already assembled there, sitting on Indian carpets beneath blanket tarps meant to keep the sun out and positive energy in.
Sonal proceeded to lead the group of about 50 in a 45-minute meditation. Sonal provided a series of inspirational prompts meant to give meaning and direction to the meditative state. Sonal asked us to close our eyes and suspend judgment. Giving too much detail into each of the prompts would sacrifice the integrity of the space we were in, but generally speaking Sonal led an emotional period of deep reflective thought about our own abilities to forgive and love unconditionally.
After the meditation Sonal engaged fellows in a talk about her philosophies of persuasion (our day’s curriculum focus) and youth development in the context of organizational nonprofit development. Sonal focused on providing a framework for development and persuasion based on love and abundance. She said that persuasion starts with self-love and that operating from a state of scarcity is acting from a ‘state of fear’, which ‘may lead to a lack of integrity’ when seeking resources for ones’ efforts. She also talked about placing the youth at your spiritual center while you pick your funders, versus your funders picking you.
While I believe this passage does not do justice to the extent and comprehensive knowledge presented by Sonal to the fellows, I hope it provides a glimpse of the transcendental operating mantras of one of our worlds emerging leaders. Sonal thinks and acts in a way I find refreshing and inspiring. She provides a framework based in love and abundance that has profound implications for all of our work, and I am happy to have been in the presence of Sonal and the magical work of Protsahan.