Management 13th Edition by John Schermerhorn,Daniel Bachrach

Exercise 9

LEARN FROM ROLE MODELS
His life changed and its "second chapter" started after a trekking holiday in Nepal.
Former Microsoft Executive Fights Illiteracy and Gains Fulfillment

T here are many ways to help build a better society. John Wood's choice is social entrepreneurship that promotes literacy for children in the developing world. During a successful career as a Microsoft executive, his life changed after he went on a trekking vacation to the Himalayas of Nepal. While there, Wood was shocked at the lack of schools and limited access to educational materials. He pledged to collect books for a Nepalese school that he visited on his trip, and he returned a year later with 3,000 to give to the students. But the impact on his future didn't end there. Wood was inspired to leverage his years of executive experience to accomplish more through nonprofit work.
Wood quit his Microsoft job to found Room to Read. It builds libraries and schools in poor nations like Nepal, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Laos, and publishes local language books to help fill them. Now in what he calls the "second chapter" in his life, Wood's passion is to provide the lifelong benefits of education to poor children. His organization's website describes the vision this way: "We envision a world in which all children can pursue a quality education that enables them to reach their full potential and contribute to their community and the world."
Picture this scene in Laos, one of the world's poorest nations. Children sit happily in a small library filled with books reading a story with their teacher. It's a Room to Read project. So far the organization has put in place over 700 libraries and built 140 schools in this small land-locked Southeast Asian country. Laos has just over 8,000 primary schools nationwide and the majority offer only incomplete educational experiences.
The Room to Read model is so efficient that it can build schools for as little as $6,000 and is now setting up five or six new libraries each day. Over 10,000 libraries are already in place in Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. Time magazine called Wood and his team "Asian Heroes." Fast Company magazine gave Room to Read its Social Capitalist Award. Noting that one-seventh of the global population can't read or write, Wood says: "I don't see how we are going to solve the world's problems without literacy."
FIND THE INSPIRATION
Room to Read builds one school or library at a time, but the results add up quickly-almost 10 million children have benefited from Room to Read's programs to date. Is the success of Room to Read due in part to Wood's prior business and management experience How can such experience help nonprofit organizations Can you identify a social problem in your community that might be addressed using John Wood and his work with Room to Read as a role model How do you see yourself fulfilling higher order needs in the future Will earning good money at work be enough, or will your self-actualization require something more