Wood bersama Oprah.
John Wood
John Wood di Nepal.
John Wood was a man who achieved the American dream. A businessman at Microsoft since 1991, he was worth millions of dollars. He lived in the lap of luxury—he flew business class around the world, lived in a beautiful home and had a personal chauffeur. "There were times when I looked around and felt like I just hit the jackpot," he says.
Then, John took a vacation that would change his life forever. "My first trip to Nepal in 1998 was taken just to escape from the constant 7/24, commando, business-warrior lifestyle," he says. "I trekked for 18 days through areas that had no paved roads, no cars, no telephones. People were living in poverty in conditions that I just found shocking."
During his trip, John took an opportunity to visit a school, thinking he would see the "real Nepal." What he saw depressed him. Seventy five or 80 kids were crammed into a small room with dirt floors. "Most importantly, they had a library that had only about 20 books that were backpacker cast-offs, completely inappropriate for children," he says. "And I wondered, 'How can you ever break the cycle of poverty if the kids don't get educated?'"
John vowed to return to the school within a year to bring books for a new library. "One of the teachers said to me, 'Many people have told us they will come back, but nobody ever does.'"
After he left the school, John journeyed to Katmandu, Nepal, where he started e-mailing about 150 of his friends. "Here are all these villages that don't have libraries, that don't have books," he says. "And I thought, 'We can change that. But we have to act now.'"
With the help of his father, John began gathering more books than he ever dreamed possible. "We thought we'd collect 300, 400 books. Three thousand books rolled in, in the first month," he says. Soon thereafter, John kept his promise. He and his father returned to Nepal, loaded eight donkeys with books and visited schools to stock their libraries.
As John realized the scale of the problem, he began working on more book deliveries. And the reaction of the children in villages fueled his new mission. "These kids were just mobbing us. … As I take the books out of the backpack—it's like a mosh pit," he says. "It's like a literacy-palooza!"
Once the children received their books, John says they began to learn about places they'd never seen. As one little girl looked at a book about outer space, John realized she didn't even know that man had ever walked on the moon.
After his first book delivery, John returned to his day job at Microsoft…but he says something inside him had changed.
At first, he tried to juggle his corporate responsibilities with his charitable cause. "I was doing my literacy project in kind of a half-baked manner, and I was doing Microsoft in kind of a half-baked manner…and I'm not really a half-baked kind of guy," he says. "I would be getting an e-mail from Bill Gates's assistant about Bill's visit to China, which I was supposedly in charge of. And I was, like, 'Yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever, because I've got this mail over here from somebody who wants to give me 20 copies of a Dr. Seuss book for our libraries.'"
Although John loved his job and all the perks that went with it, he was ready for a more meaningful existence. "I was feeling the pull," he says. "I thought, 'It's been a great eight years, but I'm making wealthy shareholders wealthier. Meanwhile, there are 800 million people in the developing world lacking basic literacy. … What kind of a man am I if I don't go face this challenge directly or devote my life to this?'"
John made the difficult decision to quit his job so he could dedicate 100 percent of his energy to improving literacy in developing countries. "People said, 'You're crazy. You're having a midlife crisis,'" he says. "And I thought, 'Wouldn't it be a crisis to not follow my heart and not follow my passion?'"
In just seven years, John transformed his side project into a successful nonprofit organization called Room to Read. Thanks to donations from publishing companies like Scholastic and the generosity of strangers, Room to Read has impacted the lives of more than a million children.
So far, John and his team have distributed almost 3 million children's books, constructed 287 schools, established 3,600 libraries and funded more than 2,000 long-term scholarships for girls in third-world countries. But they didn't stop there!
Room to Read has established local language publishing programs throughout the world so children can have access to culturally relevant books that are written in their native languages.
"We've had to literally find the Dr. Seuss of Nepal and the Dr. Seuss of Cambodia and give them a small amount of money to write and illustrate books that then are put in the hands of kids," he says. "By the end of this year, we'll have 250 original titles that we've produced that are all done by local authors."
In just seven years, John transformed his side project into a successful nonprofit organization called Room to Read. Thanks to donations from publishing companies like Scholastic and the generosity of strangers, Room to Read has impacted the lives of more than a million children.
So far, John and his team have distributed almost 3 million children's books, constructed 287 schools, established 3,600 libraries and funded more than 2,000 long-term scholarships for girls in third-world countries. But they didn't stop there!
Room to Read has established local language publishing programs throughout the world so children can have access to culturally relevant books that are written in their native languages.
"We've had to literally find the Dr. Seuss of Nepal and the Dr. Seuss of Cambodia and give them a small amount of money to write and illustrate books that then are put in the hands of kids," he says. "By the end of this year, we'll have 250 original titles that we've produced that are all done by local authors."
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Since giving up millions to deliver books in rural Himalayan villages, John's life has changed dramatically. He says he's been left standing alone at a few dinner parties by people who were more interested in social status than global literacy.
"You give up a lot," he says. "But when [you] walk into a village … and [watch] the red ribbon get cut on a school, you think to yourself, 'This is not sacrifice. This is something that you can barely describe.' It makes you feel so good."
John may be making less money than he ever has in his life, but he's also putting in more hours than he ever has before. "I feel lucky that I found this, but I also feel a certain sense of impatience because there are so many kids we haven't reached yet," he says. "Every week we get these heartbreaking letters in our office in San Francisco from people saying, 'When can you bring Room to Read to Cameroon? When can you bring Room to Read to the slums of Rio de Janeiro?' … We have to think about all the kids we haven't yet reached, and then just go back to work."
Currently, there are more than 770 million illiterate adults in the world, two-thirds of whom are women and girls. John hopes to change this by building 20,000 new libraries by the year 2020. Help Room to Read reach its goal by donating a book today!
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