"Rural leaders are undoubtedly the foundation to evoke and empower proper vision into overall development of their community. This means that they should be well informed of the best practices and approaches in problem solving and management. To bring about a change, there should be much thought to it. The iLEAP Fellowship program, which focuses on personal capacity and skill building training programs and is based on rigorous interaction among people from similar community backgrounds, can certainly help rural leaders in gaining insight into their problems. Furthermore, the Fellowship provides a strong platform to develop lateral thinking skills and help to improvise/devise upon efficient and applicable approaches in problem solving.

The iLEAP International Fellowship program helps rural leaders to have a better understanding of civil society. The program is focused towards professional skill building and creative problem solving skills and there is a great dynamism in the program as it is designed to foster critical and authentic dialogue between organizations from urban and rural backgrounds. In addition service learning, as another key aspect of the program, provides a detailed view of the urban organization's working system,

Mr. Ramraj Pokhrel,

2008 iLEAP Fellow

SAHAMATI (Nepal)

approach, strategy, program planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation. This gives a complete cyclic view in organizational development management and definitely helps the participant as well as the sending organization in adopting optimal practices and approaches in organizational management. Finally, the most important thing for the rural leaders is to understand and adopt the most scientific and informed approaches and I believe that the Fellowship definitely entertains this concern. This learning should then be best judged to assess feasibility and sustainability in their communities."