Just imagine you are at the borders of a huge city. On one site you have the city life, shops, cars and trams, power, drinking water … on the other there live poor people who live from collecting plastic bottles, single mothers with six, eight children, people who are not accepted elsewhere.  And in the middle – as separation line –  there is a huge, empty field.  A small river seems to separate the city from the poor area. Depending on the season the water level is very high and medical care and school visits can get impossible.

A kind of bridge made out of materials found somewhere, with huge gaps and metal sheets at the bottom based on a construction that no safety organization could accept, leads to the other world – moving, rusty. That’s the only way to take for everyone who lives there in the poor area called (ironically) the Dallas area of Iasi. You cross the bridge and then you walk ten minutes just across an empty field. Two, three cows are there. And that’s the place where the mobile school takes place, once per week.

When we arrive the vehicle with a variety of panels on which a lot of different educating games are offered has just been placed and a lot of children are coming out of the poor village.

They do not ask whether we are rich or poor, whether we are coming from abroad or what kind of profession we have. All they want is that we stay and play with them.

They are proud and happy if they can solve the tasks. Every solution is a win to them. In a double senses. The one we all know finding the right solution. And the second, even more important win: Every “fuerte bine” (very good) helps them to gain the most important thing: self- esteem.

It is self- esteem that enables us to like who we are and to make us think that it is worth that we try, that we are able to act, to create, to invent, to engage. No self- esteem is one of the worst situations we can be in.

This is true in the world of the very poor, but even in our huge businesses.

Have you ever thought on how you feel about self- esteem? Or how your team members feel about it?

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