It's not always easy to keep a fire going on within you, especially when there aren't many people around you doing the same things as you. A young girl of 20 years, who everybody expects to be going to college, is at home taking a huge break from her studies to experiment with her ideals and abilities. She just couldn't wait to see if she is really capable of bringing her ideals regarding the world and its people into action. She just couldn't wait to start feeling worthwhile by doing exceptional things in needy areas. She always felt needed at unprivileged areas and she couldn't wait until she got 'old enough' to do things.
It is not like UWC out here at home. At Pearson UWC, almost everybody is concerned about the world and people they might never meet, about environment and sustainability, and about international co-operation and peaceful human existence. Breaking the trend to do things that good for the above causes is almost a trend at any UWC. But once we move out of UWC, we go through a disillusionment. We find our ideals and dreams limited almost only to our hearts and minds and find ourselves utterly different to the rest of the world in the way we think and look at issues around us. It is hard to accept that not everybody cares for the world as much as people at UWCs do and as much as probably every human being should.
At home here in Kathmandu, there are twenty times the number of people who ask me why I'm into wasting my 2 years, postponing my college graduation date and doing things for which I don't even get money. I'd love to explain to everybody why I'm doing what I am. But if only it was possible to explain to all the people who care about me. When at times I burn out, I sometimes don’t even have another candle burning beside me to lend the flame for the candle in my heart.
But right then appear books like 'How to Change the World'. Never have I been so grateful for books as I have been during this period of my life. It is really important to know about people who are into things similar to you or into things that you'd like to get into. And this book has precisely offered me that. To me this book is about people who have not only identified problems in their societies but also defined roles for themselves in regard to the issue and acted on it instead of expecting and waiting for others. This book is about the people who have acted to 'bring about the change they wanted to see' and to 'make the world what they wanted it to be'. And it is about the people who have done so regardless of how the trend spoke to them.
For me, reading this book called 'How to Change the World' is like have an hour of reflection on how I have been working on the ideas connected to National Youth Service, like having a conversation and sharing session with people who have acted on making big changes with a humble starting and like opening a book of possibilities and hopes for every new day with NYS.


I will write about specific entrepreneurs mentioned in the book sometime later.