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One Teaches Two

We have found that any community can experience exponential growth when one person takes the responsibility of teaching two others.

An ancient story

A story from India tells of a king who, being pleased with one of his servants, told him to ask for a favor. The servant asked the king to put one grain of rice on the first square of a chess board and merely double the grains of rice on each subsequent square. That is, put two on the next square, four on the next one, eight on the next square, and so on.

We have found that any community can experience exponential growth when one person takes the responsibility of teaching two others.

An ancient story

A story from India tells of a king who, being pleased with one of his servants, told him to ask for a favor. The servant asked the king to put one grain of rice on the first square of a chess board and merely double the grains of rice on each subsequent square. That is, put two on the next square, four on the next one, eight on the next square, and so on.

"That's not enough," the king said in his generosity. "Ask for more."

What the king did not realize was that by the time he covered only half of the chess board, there would be more than 8.5 billion grains of rice. And the chess board could not be completed even with all of the rice on earth.

The power of a movement

Such is the power of a movement in which people learn from each other. That is the essence, the driving force, of a movement.

In Trees for Life, each person helped pledges to help two others in the same way. Those two people then help others, and the movement grows.