The pillars that support the foundation’s vision include:
- Advocacy
- Building inclusive leadership that meets the social-political environmental and economic challenges of the 21st century in a sustainable manner
- Entrepreneurship
- Innovation
- Research
- Technology
In our endeavors to achieve the foundation’s vision, we equally value both the processes involved and the outcomes. We are guided by the values of integrity, transparency, accountability, inclusion, and shared leadership. We are committed to putting these values in practice in all aspects of the foundation.
- Integrity: Through our own actions, we seek to inspire integrity in all. We will never lose sight of our values and move toward our goals with sincerity. We will step up towards the truth, against injustice and prejudices, even if it means speaking up against it persistently or fighting for it alone.
- Transparency: We believe having transparency in our system allows others to judge our intentions by their own selves. We will regularly share our plans, decisions and financial activities and progress in order to build trust through the promotion of a culture of honesty and information sharing.
- Accountability: We will be accountable toward our communities. We will proactively communicate information and welcome any communication, suggestions, and inquiries.
- Inclusion: The foundation respects all religions, faiths, and ideologies with “humanity first” as our guiding mantra. We will be intentional about creating an enabling environment and safe spaces for all individuals and communities to actively engage with the foundation.
- Shared leadership: We will practice participatory decision-making with shared power that builds on each others’ strengths and brings out different perspectives. We will facilitate a sense of ownership through regular communication and teamwork among members.
In addition to these values, the Foundation also embraces values that Ujwal Thapa believed could transform Nepal. In his own words, these values include:
Integrity: When there is a synergy between what one says and how one follows through, then one can be called a person of integrity respected by the society. The simple honest way of life of Gurus always pushes the society, country and the world to do a collective good.
Humility: It is imperative that the current worship of arrogant leadership style of “Only I can do & Only I know how to do!” is destroying the world we live in. This needs to be corrected by Gurus who are ever humble, think of the world around them more than themselves. Humility also changes the society from focusing on, “who is right” to “what is right” which helps build a win-win relationship and respect between each of us.
Empathy: (the capacity to place oneself in another’s position) In a nation full of diverse (sometimes conflicting) customs, attitudes and generations, only when citizens start generating enough empathy towards each other, will we find ways to improve our collective wisdom. If Nepalis are guided more by our humanity and less by our destructive individual greed, where differing views, ideas and pains are treated with empathy and converged through dialogues and tolerance, then we may gain the critical characteristics needed for citizens of a Guru nation.
Courage: Citizens in a Guru nation have enough moral courage to consistently raise their voices against the prejudices and injustices they feel around them. As someone said, courage is not the absence of fear, but the ability to persist despite the fear. Similarly, only when we have the drive to take action from the knowledge we have, will we become ‘bibeksheel’ or judicious.
Excellence: Both citizens and their societies who respect the excellence which diversity brings, will protect the sovereignty of their nation, equitable growth of the society and the dignity of its citizens through creative, innovative experiments. Excellent leadership is always accountable to the well being of citizens. Citizens first!
Transparency: Only if we develop citizens who are transparent in their ideas and the systems they build, is it possible to root out the society’s own hypocritical culture of rampant corruption and loot (extraction). Guru citizens are continuously transparent in their decisions, ways, systems and finances and expect the same from others around them.
~ From Guru Nation, Nepal