HOW WOULD YOU CHANGE THE WORLD?

Dalai Lama Fellows (DLF) offers emerging social innovators a rigorous, interdisciplinary, and deeply contemplative program to reimagine leadership as involving self-awareness, personal sustainability, genuine compassion for others, and the capacity to skillfully navigate complex systems at multiple levels. Our Fellows learn practices for cultivating emotional intelligence, self-care, resilience, empathy, deep listening, and communication skills in order to foster systems for human and planetary flourishing for generations to come. Over the course of a year, with the support of mentors and coaches, each Fellow implements an original field project addressing a local challenge and learns how to interweave their own transformation with the transformation of the communities with which they are engaging. Upon graduation, Fellows join a community of LifeLong Fellows, with whom they connect in mutually supportive ways while continuing to advance their leadership journeys.

Our fellowship focuses on flourishing as an end goal, and contemplation as a critical pathway to get there. To flourish is to realize well-being by achieving deep states of health and actualization of potential in all aspects of life (physical, social, emotional, cognitive, academic, professional), as well as to actively contribute to the well-being and flourishing of other people, other communities, and the natural world. Contemplation—the variety of experiential, integrated, and immersive forms of learning and resiliency that afford deep reflection, integration of the personal and the intellectual, transformative understanding, and the cultivation of skills applicable to all domains in one’s life—is critical to flourishing.

To date we have awarded 229 Fellowships. See where our Fellows come from!

A Tri-university partnership

In 2021, DLF entered a phase of joint stewardship among the University of Virginia Contemplative Sciences Center, Stanford University Stanford Flourishing Project, and the University of Colorado Boulder Renée Crown Wellness Institute. Faculty and staff at these three universities are working together to deliver the global fellowship program as well as create interlinked academic programs for undergraduates at each university.

ABOUT THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA CONTEMPLATIVE SCIENCES CENTER

The mission of the Contemplative Sciences Center (CSC) is to advance the study and application of flourishing for individuals, communities, and the more-than-human world at all levels of education. We are pursuing our mission through a holistic series of programs in academic classrooms, residential life, digital technologies, research, scholarship, community engagement, and social innovation.

ABOUT THE STANFORD University Stanford FLOURISHING PROJECT

The Stanford Flourishing Project aims to innovate and scale the art and science of flourishing for all. The Flourishing Project is housed within Stanford School of Medicine’s Division of Health and Human Performance, which seeks to educate the whole person for life-long flourishing.

ABOUT THE UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO BOULDER RENÉE CROWN WELLNESS INSTITUTE

The Renée Crown Wellness Institute envisions every young person thriving, supported by the caring relationships and inner resources required for a lifetime of wellness. Its mission is to promote the wellness of young people and the systems and adults who support them through interdisciplinary research-practice partnerships.

history

Dalai Lama Fellows was founded in 2010, with the support of the 14th Dalai Lama (Read the Dalai Lama’s Authorization Letter), as an independent, non-sectarian, and inclusive organization. Beginning with a fellowship program, DLF has become a pioneer in integrating contemplative practices and personal flourishing with social innovation.

To-date, the fellowship program has reached 229 individuals across 56 nationalities, constituting an active global leadership network that serves as a continuing resource of human flourishing for next generation social innovators.

In September 2018, DLF entered into a strategic partnership with the University of Virginia Contemplative Sciences Center (CSC)—a leader in the field of flourishing and contemplation in education—to ensure its long-term sustainability and maximize its impact and reach. In 2021, the Stanford University Stanford Flourishing Project and the University of Colorado Boulder Renée Crown Wellness Institute joined CSC in a joint stewardship of DLF. Each university contributes faculty and staff to deliver the global fellowship program while also operating interwoven local academic programs for students on each university’s campus.

CORE VALUES

We embrace and advance five core values as we conduct our work:

• Integrity — We strive to be wholly honest and to have consistent alignment between our values and actions

• Interdependence — We work in the interest of present and future generations because we are all connected and mutually dependent

• Resilience — We meet challenges with optimism, ingenuity, flexibility, and grace

• Humbition (Humility + Ambition) — We live with the questions rather than presume the answers, and ground social change with respect for others

• Courage — We have strength to take action for moral reasons, despite doubts, fears or risk of adverse consequences