John Wood, a former Microsoft executive who left his $2 million job in 1998, has built a new life building libraries and schools in southeast Asia. He found his new vocation while hiking and climbing in the Himalayas.
“It was the second day of an 18-day trek in the Annapurnas,” Wood recalls, “when I met a headmaster who invited me to visit his school in Bahundanda…Eighty kids were crammed into classrooms meant for 20. They sat on long benches with no backs, balancing notebooks on their knees. The chalkboard was tiny and the absence of artificial lighting made it hard to see. But what struck me the most was the school library: an empty room with 20 books, backpacker castoffs like Danielle Steel novels that the kids would never read anyway.
Wood eventually formed R2R (Room to Read) which has opened more than 1000 libraries and shipped more than 500,000 books, among other accomplishments.
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