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The Blue Sweater: Bridging the Gap Between Rich and Poor in an Interconnected World (Hardcover)

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Key Phrases: new learning curve, blue bakery, microfinance organization, The Blue Sweater, Acumen Fund, Rockefeller Foundation (more...)
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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Novogratz combined her twin passions for banking and philanthropy after she left a lucrative corporate banking position to work with women's groups in microfinance, the pioneering banking strategy that won Muhammad Yunus a Nobel Peace Prize in 2006. Her work merging market systems with development and social empowerment led her to create the Acumen Fund for entrepreneurs in developing nations, which she describes as the opposite of old-fashioned charity. Novogratz also focuses on her own developmental path as she charts her evolving views of capitalism and how she will change the world. Unfortunately, she stumbles when she strays into biographical territory, relying on clichés to bolster her professional decisions through a personal lens. The book is most interesting when it touches on the difficult decisions that Novogratz and her team must make about financial empowerment—should they charge interest on loans to poor women? can working women find acceptance in a patriarchal society?—but these dilemmas are facilely glossed, keeping the book in an uncomfortable limbo between a personal narrative and a primer on globalization. (Feb.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.


From Booklist

Acumen Fund founder Novogratz blends two narratives in this memoir about her years fighting global poverty. In one thread, she recounts her early experiences in Africa developing microfinance organizations to assist women. Many of her reminiscences focus on relationships with the local women in government who were key to her success as well as the personal trials she encountered matching her Western vision with their ideas about the future. She also writes about later work in India and Pakistan. The other thread focuses on her return to Rwanda after the genocide. Although her inside view of global poverty initiatives and politics at the most basic level makes for interesting reading, her personal story intrudes in a manner that some readers may find self-serving. Her reflections on the genocide also detract from the economic discussion in India and Pakistan, rendering the book more Rwanda-centric (and thus more political) than she may have intended. In the end, Novogratz does provide enough information on microfinance to make readers curious to learn more. --Colleen Mondor
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Product Details

  • Hardcover: 304 pages
  • Publisher: Rodale Books (March 3, 2009)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 1594869154
  • ISBN-13: 978-1594869150
  • Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.2 x 1.2 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (89 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.com Sales Rank: #4,074 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    Popular in these categories: (What's this?)

    #3 in  Books > Business & Investing > Economics > Macroeconomics
    #12 in  Books > Nonfiction > Current Events > Poverty

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More About the Author

Jacqueline Novogratz
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Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Search Inside This Book:
Inside This Book (learn more)
Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
new learning curve, blue bakery, microfinance organization, bed nets, blue sweater
Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
The Blue Sweater, Acumen Fund, Rockefeller Foundation, United States, New York, Wall Street, Building Brick, Road Map, Patient Capitalist, East Africa, Context Matters, World Bank, Innocent Abroad, West Africa, The Blue Bakery, The Cost of Silence, Institutions Matter, Blue Paint, The World We Dream, Future We Create Together, South Africa, Anne Marie, Maha Ghosananda, New Delhi, Next Generation Leadership
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Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
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Customer Reviews

89 Reviews
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4.4 out of 5 stars (89 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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37 of 45 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars good stories; lackluster writing, December 4, 2008
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
Jacqueline Novogratz's writing is not particularly elegant or original, but her stories are powerful. She has worked all over the developing world as a consultant who helps poor women start businesses. She is a strong believer in the transformative power of capitalism.

She could be right about that. But some of her stories, particularly the ones about Africa, seem to point more to the rampant corruption that ruins attempts to improve lives than to the small successes that microfinancing sometimes creates. Her hopefulness and faith in people, despite this endemic corruption, is commendable, but at times it seems a bit romantic, although she often decries this over-optimistic romanticism in other Western development workers.

Her stories about Rwanda are the most riveting. She worked in Rwanda in the 1980s before the genocide and then returned often after the genocide to find her friends and hear their stories. The stories, not unexpectedly, are harrowing. Many women lost almost all their relatives and children; one was in prison for inciting genocide.

Her meditation on the efficacy of bed nets to prevent malaria is thoughtful and convincing, and she discusses honestly the pros and cons of selling versus giving away bed nets.

The reader comes away with a detailed picture of life in the developing world, in all its beauty and horror, and with admiration for the people who keep trying to help despite the enormous obstacles.
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21 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars How to change the world, December 4, 2008
By Linda Bulger (Avon, Maine) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)      
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
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
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23 of 30 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Be careful, this book will change you, March 2, 2009
By Seth Godin "Seth Godin" (Irvington, NY USA) - See all my reviews
Most of us have chosen to live a smaller life, one focused on our work, our families and our neighborhood. It's easier that way.

In this urgent, timely and timeless book, Jacqueline shows us a different way. Jacqueline's world gets bigger every day, not smaller. Her interactions increase possibility, they don't diminish it. Her investments enrich communities, they don't take from them.

When you hear the joy in her voice, or feel the emotion in her stories, you will realize that the world is bigger than you ever imagined.

More important, you'll understand the power of connection, the necessity of interaction and the power you have, right now, to change the world.

Too often, we judge a book by its cover, or a song by its opening riff. The Blue Sweater is a deep book, one that you'll want to reread and then share again and again.

I hope you'll suspend disbelief just long enough to read this book. It will change you, for the better.

Thank you Jacqueline.
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4.0 out of 5 stars Recommended reading.
Here is a book that gives an alternative to the all-too-prevalent belief that the best way to help poor people is to give them money or stuff. Read more
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5.0 out of 5 stars An inspirational book that will forever change the way you look at solving world poverty.
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