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DIY generation: Advice in Action

Coming across women, who are financially proactive and run their household, is what provoked him to ask everyone he met what they had learned from life.

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Ramola at work in Mumbai. Photo: Mandar Deodhar
Ramola at work in Mumbai. Photo: Mandar Deodhar

"My mother was pulled out of school in grade five by her grandmother, who didn't want any of the daughters in the house, especially the eldest one, to study with boys or to study at all," says Deepak Ramola.

Coming across women, who are financially proactive and run their household, is what provoked him to ask everyone he met what they had learned from life. He'd note the answers down and found himself referring to them every time he needed advice.

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In 2014, the Dehradun boy turned this into a full-time project called FUEL, or Forward the Understanding of Every Life-Lesson.

"Through Project FUEL, I seek to build a community of people who live, learn and share in order to make meaningful psycho-social and emotional contribution to themselves and the society at large," he says.

The workshops create participatory activities and engaging exercises to impart basic life lessons.

"Since 2014, we have worked with over 70,000 people-from human trafficking survivors in Nepal to middle-school students in Afghanistan, to villagers from a village in India to even Syrian refugees in Europe," says Ramola.

"In June 2017, through our Wise Wall Project, we painted the world's first 'Village of Life Lessons' in Saur, a 600-year-old Tehri Garhwal village with only 12 families and conducted workshops there."

Ramola worries that the focus of "building great entrepreneurs and employees has overshadowed the need of building great human beings". FUEL aims to change that.