There are so many things in the world that want changing -- how does a young, committed college graduate decide where to begin? Jacqueline Novogratz was an international credit banker on the fast track with Chase Manhattan Bank, but her work in Brazil showed her that big commercial banks had nothing to offer the poor. Having always planned to change the world, she turned her back on high finance and took a position in West Africa with a nonprofit microfinance organization.
The Blue Sweater: Bridging the Gap Between Rich and Poor in an Interconnected World is author Novogratz's own story of her love affair with that work.
Her early days in Nairobi were not a great success. The project was intended to provide microloans to poor women, but the local women leading the project did not appreciate a brash young American who knew nothing of their culture. Sidelined from any role in that enterprise, she wound up in East Africa where she developed a deep commitment to the women of Rwanda. Knowledge of banking principles was not enough to assure success, and she gradually attained the insights necessary for her work to succeed. Rwandan women were traditionally excluded from economic rights, and large international aid projects offered them nothing they could use. Novogratz soon learned that if you help a woman, you help a family. Her goal was to provide microloans AND the skill set necessary to start and grow business. The concerns of the women were food, clothing, and shelter for their families, clean water, basic health care, irrigation for the crops they chose to grow. Aid that fosters these basic services is a necessary adjunct to the development of income, if families are to lift themselves out of poverty.
Novogratz's trial-and-error stories are frank and sometimes funny, but the reader is constantly aware that a young woman alone in Africa is living on the thin edge of danger. After more than two years, during which time she formed strong bonds of friendship and established important local institutions in Rwanda, she was aware that she needed to know more about leadership to go further. She returned to the U.S. to attend business school at Stanford, and took a position with the Rockefeller Foundation where she established the Philanthropy Workshop, a four-week course offering training in the principles of strategic giving; and The Next Generation Leadership, a program for the development of leaders. She then founded and currently runs the Acumen Fund, a nonprofit venture fund for investment and development in the world's poorest regions. "Patient capital" is their term for bridging the divide between traditional charity and traditional business investment, using principles of moral leadership and empowerment.
Novogratz knew from childhood that she wanted to change the world. Easier said than done! But walk with her beside women who have nothing but dreams, hear the first-hand horror of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, read about well-meaning but meaningless aid projects, and experience a hundred little epiphanies about leadership and economic development; and you'll begin to believe in the possibility as well as the need. "The West wants easy answers for modern atrocities, revolving around ancient tribal hatreds, international aid gone astray, or political corruption. The real world does not oblige," Novogratz writes. The world wants to punish and prevent "...atrocities that can come only from a deep-seated fear of the Other in our midst; and such fear is fueled in a world where the rich feel above the system and the poor feel entirely left out."
This is a book about life-changing issues. It's a fascinating read and I recommend it wholeheartedly.
Note: this review is based on an uncorrected reading copy. Thanks to the publisher and to Amazon Vine for the opportunity to review this wonderful book.
Linda Bulger, 2008
