There’s something very compelling about a child standing up to unfortunate traditions like child labor.

Young girl working in Aït-Ben-Haddou, Morocco. Photo by Zouavman Le Zouave

World Vision, the Christian humanitarian organization for child advocacy, sponsors children around the world. They recently wrote about 16-year-old Manjula Dharwad in Holtikolti, India and her role in turning the tide of the dropout rate from the school in her village.

Manjula has been sponsored by World Vision since she was six and has benefited from a children’s club formed by the organization. When one of the club members announced he was dropping out of school to work with his family on a plantation, Manjula mobilized her club to work with the boy’s family. As a team, they managed to convince the family that education would be more beneficial in the long run for any child, while at the same time they arranged practical financial support to keep their schoolmate in school.

Choosing education over income is a tough decision in Holtikolti, India, but ultimately it results in a far greater and more positive effect for individuals and the community.

In The Ring in the Rubble, we talk about inspiring leadership through our investments in the people around us.

To better lead change in the future, build better relationships with your upcoming ringleaders now. When change hits, ringleaders are the folks you can count on to pick up a shovel without being told. And, they are the ones that others willingly follow into the pile time and again to search for the ring. — From The Ring in the Rubble, by Gary Bradt

Likewise, by motivating families and their children at the grassroots level, Manjula and many others are incrementally overcoming generations of child exploitation.

It’s probably the same with any change initiative globally, locally and in our work.

The sorrows, disappointments, bad ideas, big mistakes and crises of townspeople go up in flames each year in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The city’s Zozobra Festival has become a successful civic fund-raiser by tapping into a need that we all have: to let go of whatever is holding us down or holding us back. For ten bucks you can burn divorce papers, a box of medical receipts, a handful of credit cards or anything that symbolizes old rubble that you’re ready to be rid of. (Read about it in the September 12, 2009 Wall Street Journal.)

Zozobra goes up in flames in Santa Fe. Photo by Jeff Weiss (Creative Commons).

It’s not surprising that an artist started the festival. In 1924, Will Shuster made a ritual of burning his gloomy marionette, Zozobra. People who create, often imbue their works with deep symbolism.

Then again, don’t we all? We assign life-altering importance to things, be they tangible items or pieces of paper that represent them, sometimes without evaluating their worth. Bad habits, wasteful policies and inefficient processes become the norm, just because they’re “official” or because “it’s always been done that way.”

Fire codes prevent bonfires in most offices, but a symbolic burning is a great idea for leading change, because the first step of moving forward with a new initiative or commitment is letting go of whatever we’re holding onto that in reality is holding us back.

Set a date for a virtual bonfire within your group or organization. List the mindsets, attitudes or beliefs that are holding you back. Is it blaming others for your failures? Complaining about the economy, your market, or your clients? Get it all out; get everyone considering what’s an asset and what’s a liability in the way you think about your business. Put all the rubble on a flipchart and agree to be done with it; perhaps with a shredder versus a torch. You can’t move forward holding onto the past.

After our last post on the 9th Ward Field of Dreams, we had an opportunity to speak with the founder, manager and soul of the project, Brian Bordainick. His story impresses us, not just for his eleventh-hour extra effort to save an almost-ruined project, but because of his success at taking on leadership roles he never expected.

“As an educator, it’s been an interesting experience since Katrina, working with eight FEMA trailers and students who missed months of one the biggest socializing aspects of their lives,” says Bordainick of life immediately after the hurricane. They were also short staffed. “The athletic director asked me if would coach basketball and thought it would be a good way to get to know my students out of the classroom, so I said ‘sure.’ Then the athletic director left and I was asked if I could be athletic director and in a ‘famous last words’ kind of way, I thought ‘how hard can that be?’”

Bordainick found himself shifting from teacher, to coach to athletic director and ultimately to businessman. “I moved into the entrepreneurial world and, honestly, I’m not sure how to accept that.”

Evidently, he’s thriving at it, cajoling physicians to give free team physicals, creating a corporation to manage the 9th Ward Field of Dreams project, opening a foundation and convening a board of directors. We all know what CEOs earn, but Bordainick does it on a teacher’s salary. “I have become the liaison between my school and the business community,” says Bordainick.

And this is how Bordainick’s career progressed since Katrina, one new leadership challenge after another. So it should come as no surprise how he artlessly handled the pitch that got the attention of the NFL, CNN and CBS’ “Sixty Minutes.”

After learning that the project’s original architect had backed out on the Friday before a Monday deadline and after hosting a big media tour on campus, Bordainick worked the phones into the night, to everyone he thought might be able to help find a new design to qualify for the NFL grant.

“A friend was at a party Saturday night and texted me that he had spotted architect Steve Dumez,” says Bordainick. “My friend wrote that he would corner Dumez and put me on the phone with him. So I got a call from my friend who told me to give it my best and then he put the phone in Dumez’s hand.”

The next day, Bordainick’s organizers met with Dumez at a coffee shop. “Steve said, ‘You know what “we need more crazy ideas like this in the city,’” says Bordainick. Dumez agreed to get the necessary plans drawn up overtime on the weekend.

Bordainick quips, “I believe irrational people rule the world and this is definitely an irrational plan!”

Could you find a better example of leadership through rapidly changing circumstances? Bordainick is obviously committed to his life’s work of improving the lives of students and his community and he never stops digging for the ring in the rubble.

May you find many rings, Brian.