STORY AND PHOTOS BY KAREN BOSSICK

Last summer Tristan Boloix and Sarah Leidecker were among a group of high school students who left the Wood River Valley where they were born and headed to India as part of the Flourish Foundation’s Compassionate Leaders program.

There they spent time in the hot sticky city of Delhi before venturing deep into the Himalaya to Ladakh, an area bordering Tibet sporting sparsely vegetated mountains that jut 19,000 feet into the air.

“The mountains there are piles of rock,” said Boloix. “And the people there are super hardy. They have to be, as the temperature gets to 20 below. But they’ve found ways to live there, and they’re happy.”

Ryan Redman greets people underneath an archway of marigold flowers.

In Ladakh, where Compassionate Leaders have been for about 20 years, the youth painted a school library, hiked to a lake where they collected medicinal herbs for medical clinics and worked in fields alongside Ladakh residents who were harvesting alfalfa with scythes.

“We bundled the alfalfa, tying each bundle with a piece of alfalfa,” said Leidecker.

Both Boloix and Leidecker came home changed.

“For me, it was eye opening seeing the situation,” said Boloix. “The people there do not have it easy like we do but they’ve figured out how to live in such harsh landscape, how to make the best of things. We’re softies in contrast.”

Helping out with the India Dinner was a no brainer for Simrah McGrew and her father Scotty, who grew up with Ryan Redman, the founder of Flourish Foundation.

“It was neat to see how warm they are as a people,” said Leidecker, who like Boloix is a student at Sage School. “People’s lives there are so different from ours, but we were able to be community across the world.”

The Flourish Foundation hopes to send 25 more of its Compassionate Leaders to Ladakh, India, for a month in July and to South Africa for two and a half weeks in June. To facilitate the journeys, they brought dozens of people together Saturday night for a Taste of India dinner at Sage School.

Attendees heaped their plates with Aloo Gobi cauliflower potato curry, Chana Masala chickpea curry, Chicken Tikka Masala and Dal lentils over basmati rice. They finished dinner with chai spice cupcakes, spiced cookies and chai tea made by the Compassionate Leaders.

“I grew up in India and I think Indian food is so flavorful,” said Sirimukh McGrew, one of the parents  preparing the meal, alongside her daughter Simrah, who has participated in Compassionate Leaders, and husband Scotty McGrew.

Anna Wiese recounts some of her recollections from a month in Ladakh.

Karissa Price-Rico said her son Santiago Rico wants to go to South Africa this summer.

“He has benefitted so much from the program,” she said. “I can see where he’s calmer, more grounded.”

Noah Koski, who has co-led Compassionate Leaders for 14 years, said Compassionate Leaders is an intentional community for young people—mostly high school juniors and seniors. They practice self-awareness through mindfulness and see how they might reflect outward to create a kinder, wiser world both for young people growing up in the Wood River Valley and for those across the world.

“People from Ladakh and South Africa are helping our young people grow up,” he said.

Ina Lee said she will be among those facilitating a Vision Fast for the youth this summer. “We’re so dependent on things like shelter. This will take the kids away from their phones and things they take for granted for a week during which they will have nothing but water for 48 hours.”

Ninety students are involved this year, splitting into two groups that meet weekly at the Flourish Foundation office near the airport. They’ve been examining the difference between happiness and joy and the role of suffering. And they’re studying secular ethics, or how they can show up for the world.

The group is trying to raise $90,000 to support this year’s trips, he said. And until March 1 every dollar given will be matched up to $25,000, thanks to a matching grant offered by two community members.

Kim Aranda, who took part in Compassionate Leaders as a student and now helps facilitate it, said she felt deeply connected to the world because of her experiences with Compassionate Leaders.

Alaska Sewell told of her experiences in South Africa at the Craig Doone Farm and Conservation Academy where there were monkeys hanging from trees. She met children who had no running water and eat one meal a day provided by the school.

“But they showed how they could be happy. I learned: Never stop being happy, never stop spreading joy where ever you go,” she said. “I learned that happiness is found in giving and that you need to embrace every step along the way.”

Over the years, Compassionate Leaders have also journeyed to Morocco, the Philippines and even Jonestown, Miss. They don’t go pretending to know what those they visit need; rather, they show up asking how to be of service, said Koski.

“It can be so beneficial to see other parts of the world, learn how to practice empathy, to show up with open hearts, open ears, open hands and open minds,” he said. “We put so much into doing and not enough into being.”

Want to know more? Visit https://www.flourishfoundation.org/.