I especially loved playing sports with them—the epitome of the “lean on” ethos, in which team members set one another up for success. In Mexico, I played soccer with a group of underprivileged girls. In war-ravaged northern Sri Lanka, I played the local sport of Elle (a bat-and-ball game) in the rain with Muslim girls who had only recently returned to school after years of conflict. And in the Middle East, I played basketball with Israeli and Palestinian girls who hoped to become engineers, architects, and even politicians. In each instance, the shy teenagers who had barely spoken before we
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