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

by Jacqueline Novogratz

  Table of Contents

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  The Blue Sweater

  Bridging the Gap between Rich and Poor

  in an Interconnected World

  Jacqueline Novogratz

  My family helped make me who I am ... and they join me in dedicating this book to our larger family, those countless millions around the world who lack money and security but possess dignity and an indomitable spirit. For their time is coming, and this story is for them.

  PROLOGUE

  hey say a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. I took mine and fell flat on my face. As a young woman, I dreamed of changing the world. In my twenties, I went to Africa to try and save the continent, only to learn that Africans neither wanted nor needed saving. Indeed, when I was there, I saw some of the worst that good intentions, traditional charity, and aid can produce: failed programs that left people in the same or worse conditions. The devastating impact of the Rwandan genocide on a people I'd come to love shrank my dreams even further. I concluded that if I could only nudge the world a little bit, maybe that would be enough.

  But nudging isn't enough. The gap between rich and poor is widening across the world, creating a dire situation that is neither socially just nor economically sustainable. Moreover, my work in Africa also taught me about the extraordinary resilience of people for whom poverty is a reality not because they don't work hard, but because there are too many obstacles in their way. One very sick child or the death of a husband can wipe out a family's savings and throw it into a vicious cycle of debt that keeps those with the least in poverty forever.

  It doesn't have to be that way. Indeed, the idealism of my twenties has returned in my forties, not simply from unfounded hopefulness, but from optimism grounded in a deep and growing pragmatism. To address poverty in a more insightful way, in 2001 1 started a nonprofit organization called Acumen Fund. We raise charitable funds, but instead of using the money for giveaways, we make careful investments in entrepreneurs who are willing to take on some of the world's toughest challenges. The entrepreneurs we seek have the vision to deliver essential services like affordable health care, safe water, housing, and alternative energy to areas where governments or charities are often failing. We measure our results in social as well as financial terms and share lessons and insights learned with the greater world.

  We've seen what can happen when an entrepreneur views the market as a listening device that reveals how to tailor services and products to the preferences of low-income people who are viewed as consumers, not victims. The entrepreneurs are driven to build systems that can eventually sustain themselves and, ultimately, serve a wide swath of the population.

  The returns on such investments can be enormous. At Acumen Fund, we've worked with an entrepreneur who built a company that provides safe water to more than a quarter million of India's rural poor, contrary to all conventional wisdom that truly low-income people would never pay. We've supported an agricultural products designer who has sold to more than 275,000 of the world's small-holder farmers drip irrigation systems that enable them to double their yields and income levels. We've invested in a malaria bed net manufacturer in Africa that now employs more than 7,000 people, mostly low-skilled women, and produces 16 million lifesaving, long-lasting bed nets a year.

  Today, I believe more strongly than I did as a young woman that we can end poverty. Never before in history have we had the skills, resources, technologies, and imagination to solve poverty that we do now. I'm also a believer because I've seen that fundamental change is possible in a single generation.

  My grandmother Stella was born in 1906. Her parents lived on a farm in Burgenland, Austria's wine region on the border with Hungary, and came to live in a little town called Northampton, Pennsylvania-like so many other Austrians, Czechs, and Hungarians-to seek their fortune. They couldn't afford to care for Stella, so when she was 3 years old her parents sent her back to Austria with her little sister, Emma, promising to bring their daughters to the new country as soon as they could manage it.

  For more than a decade, the two girls were trundled from family to family, never fully belonging. They lived the lives of domestic servants, were sometimes abused, and each was allowed to wear her one pair of shoes only on Sundays. They were given no real education except how to work hard, believe in God, and keep looking forward.

  The women of my grandmother's generation expected to start birthing children as soon as they married, do manual work outside the home for income, and take care of all household matters. My grandmother toiled under oppressive conditions as a pieceworker in a textile factory, cooked all day on Sunday, and waited until the men had eaten before she sat. And she never, ever complained. She buried three of her nine children before they were 5 years old, went to church every day, and had a beautiful, shy laugh accompanied by downcast eyes. I would come to see that same smile on so many women on the African continent.

  In America, my grandparents raised 6 children, who then brought another 25 individuals into the world. My cousins and I stand on the shoulders of our grandparents and people like them who never asked for handouts, but supported one another and shared suffering and, through hard work and determination, gave their children better futures in a country that assured them hope and opportunity, if nothing else.

  Today, poor people the world over are seeking opportunity and choice to have greater dignity in their lives-and they want to do it themselves, even if they need a little help. Today we have the tools and technologies to bring real opportunities to people all across the world.

  The time has come to extend to every person on the planet the fundamental principle that we hold so dear: that all human beings are created equal. Rather than seeing the world as divided among different civilizations or classes, our collective future rests upon our embracing a vision of a single world in which we are all connected. Indeed, maybe this notion of human connection is the most important-and complex-challenge of our time. Markets play a role in this vision, and so does public policy. So does philanthropy. We all play a role in the change we need to create.

  But where to start? Like so many young people with skills today, my desire to contribute to changing the world a quarter century ago wasn't matched by a proper game plan: I had no idea how to do it. I was a middle-class kid who paid my way through university. Pursuing a nonprofit life seemed like an enormous challenge at the start, and I didn't know anyone at the time who did the kind of work I craved. Almost all of my role models were characters in books-or dead.

  So I did what I now tell young people to do: I started where I could and where I was given a chance. This book is about my journey, one taken with gusto, if not always with wisdom. Indeed, as I look back at the adventurous young woman who left banking to pursue a life focused on a more global, connected vision, I see someone with guts, education, and skills, but also someone who had to learn time and again that those factors alone don't always lead to success.

  This book is for people who do not seek easy solutions or insist on a singular ideology for the world. It is for individuals
who care less about the amount of money people earn and more about whether they can access basic services and live with the freedom and dignity that are their inherent rights as human beings. It is for readers who seek simple truths while recognizing that today's problems are complex and often require equally complex solutions.

  My own path has challenged even my most basic assumptions. Going to Africa for the first time only to meet with threats of voodoo and poisoning made me question an outsider's role in development. Seeing a group of women with whom I had worked for years both suffer as victims and act as perpetrators in the Rwandan genocide made me reconsider the very nature of what it is to be human. Watching the Berlin Wall fall, which resulted in a widespread belief in the "victory of capitalism," while also experiencing the cruelty an unbridled capitalist system can inflict on the very poor made me seek alternative solutions that could include all people in the opportunities presented by a global economy. Meeting and working with some of the world's wealthiest individuals made me explore the role of philanthropy and private initiative in bringing about large-scale change, especially when it comes to poverty.

  My story is really composed of the stories of others, the extraordinary people who have shaped my life. They came from all corners of the worlda Cambodian monk and an elder American statesman; a man who lived his entire life in a mud hut in Africa and a president of the Rockefeller Foundation; Kenyan women dancing in a hut; a little girl who'd lost her home in Pakistan; and a genocide survivor who fought back to claim her life again with just 4 liters of milk. Each of these individuals and so many more have given me an incredible education about the human capacity to overcome enormous obstacles, how alike we are in the most fundamental ways, and that what is most important is our individual and shared sense of dignity. To a person, these unforgettable individuals, many of whom endured impossible suffering, never lost their sense of life or humor.

  It is from them that I gained the confidence and sense of possibility that sustained me. They allowed me to believe we could-and therefore must-create a world in which every person on the planet has access to the resources needed to shape their own lives. For this is where dignity starts. Not only for the very poor, but for all of us.

  CHAPTER 1

  INNOCENT ABROAD

  "There is no passion to be found playing small in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living."

  -NELSON MANDELA

  t all started with the blue sweater, the one my uncle Ed gave me. He was like Santa to me, even in the middle of July.

  Of soft blue wool, with stripes on the sleeves and an African motif across the front-two zebras walking in front of a snowcapped mountain-the sweater made me dream of places far away. I hadn't heard of Mount Kilimanjaro, nor did I have any idea that Africa would one day find a prominent place in my heart. Still, I loved that sweater and wore it often and everywhere. I wrote my name on the tag to ensure that it would be mine forever.

  In our neighborhood in Virginia in the 1970s, new clothing was a once- or twice-a-year event. We would shop in September for school and at Christmastime and then make do for the year. As the eldest of seven children, at least I didn't have to wear many hand-me-downs, and I liked choosing my own clothes; still, I loved that blue sweater. I wore it for years-right through middle school and into my freshman year in high school-though it started to fit me differently then, hugging adolescent curves I fought mightily to ignore.

  But then my high school nemesis (who would burn down the school in our senior year by throwing a Molotov cocktail into the principal's office) ruined everything. At our school, the cool kids and athletes hung out in "Jock Hall," the area right outside the gym. During football season, the cheerleaders would decorate the hall with crepe paper streamers while the guys strutted around like peacocks in green and gold jerseys. Only a freshman, I was breathless just to be admitted to the scene. One Friday afternoon, the captain of the team had asked me on a date right there in the middle of the hall. The very air seemed to crackle with expectation.

  And there was that mean kid, standing right beside me, talking to boys from the junior varsity football team about the first ski trip of the winter. He stared at my sweater, and I gave him the coldest look I could muster. "We don't have to go anywhere to ski," he yelled, pointing at my chest. "We can do it on Mount Novogratz."

  The other boys joined him in laughter. I died a thousand deaths.

  That afternoon, I marched home and announced to my mother that the vile sweater had to go. How could she have let me walk out of the house looking so mortifyingly bad? Despite my high drama, she drove me to the Goodwill in our Ford station wagon with the wood panels on the sides. Ceremoniously, we disposed of the sweater; I was glad never to have to see it again and tried hard to forget it.

  FAST-FORWARD TO EARLY 1987: Twenty-five years old, Iwasjog- ging up and down the hilly streets of Kigali, Rwanda. I'd come to the country to help establish a microfinance institution for poor women. With my Walkman playing Joe Cocker singing "With a Little Help from My Friends," I felt as if I were in a music video. On the road, women walked with bunches of yellow bananas on their heads, their hips swaying in time with the song's rhythm. Even the tall cypress trees at the roadsides seemed to shimmy. I was in a dream on a sunny, big-sky Kigali afternoon, far away from home.

  From out of nowhere, a young boy walked toward me, wearing the sweater-nmy sweater, the beloved but abandoned blue one. He was perhaps 10 years old, skinny, with a shaved head and huge eyes, not more than 4 feet tall. The sweater hung so low it hid his shorts, covering toothpick legs and knobby knees. Only his fingertips poked out of baggy sleeves. Still, there was no doubt: This was my sweater.

  Excitedly, I ran over to the child, who looked up at me, obviously terrified. I didn't speak a word of Kinyarwanda, nor did he speak French, the language on which I relied in Rwanda. As the boy stood frozen, I kept pointing to the sweater, trying not to become too agitated. I grabbed him by the shoulders and turned down the collar: Sure enough, my name was written on the tag of my sweater that had traveled thousands of miles for more than a decade.

  The blue sweater had made a complex journey, from Alexandria, Virginia, to Kigali, the capital of Rwanda. It may have gone first to a little girl in the United States, then back to the Goodwill once more before traveling across the ocean, most likely to Mombasa, on the coast of Kenya, one of Africa's most active ports. It would have arrived after being fumigated and packed into 100-pound bales along with other pieces of cast-off clothing, everything from T-shirts sold at bars at the Jersey shore to overcoats to evening gowns. The bales would have been sold to secondhand clothing distributors, who would allow retailers to discard the useless pieces and buy what they thought they could sell. Over time, many of those secondhand clothing traders would move into the middle class.

  The story of the blue sweater has always reminded me of how we are all connected. Our actions-and inaction-touch people we may never know and never meet across the globe. The story of the blue sweater is also my personal story: Seeing my sweater on that child renewed my sense of purpose in Africa. At that point in my own journey, my worldview was shifting. I'd begun my career as an international banker, discovering the power of capital, of markets, and of politics, as well as how the poor are so often excluded from all three. I wanted to understand better what stands between poverty and wealth.

  It had been a long and winding road getting to Rwanda in the first place-an unimagined outcome of choices made, sometimes with a sense of purpose, at times with reason, and sometimes simply by choosing the less traveled paths.

  WHEN I WAS 5, our family lived in Detroit. It was the mid-1960s and the city was plagued by race riots and protests against the Vietnam War. My dashing father, a lieutenant in the army, had the unenviable job of helping the mothers of dead soldiers bury their sons. I remember hearing my father's strained voice as he told my mother about the injustice of so many young soldiers being economically disadvantaged. My mother, young an
d beautiful, would hug me close when I'd ask so many questions about why people weren't all treated the same way.

  The next year, my father was serving his second of three tours in Vietnam and Korea, and we'd moved to a town outside of West Point, New York. I would walk to school early to meet my first-grade teacher, Sister Mary Theophane, and help her clean the sacristy. She was a jolly woman with round, wire-rimmed glasses that matched her apple face, and I adored being near her. I'd run past little mom-and-pop shops on the quiet streets, dressed in the dark green pleated skirt and pressed white cotton blouse I would have laid out the night before to ensure I wouldn't be late.

  Sacred Heart was an old school, right next door to the church, with little wooden desks for the students and a concrete playground outside. Sister was known as one of the kindest of the nuns, though she had high expectations for content-and handwriting. If we earned a perfect test score, she'd hand us a card with a summary of the life of a saint printed on it, and I studied diligently to collect as many cards as I could. I found their lives an inspiration, even if some of them did end up in vats of boiling oil.

  A poster of two hands holding a rice bowl hung on the classroom wall, making me think about faraway places, trying to imagine the lives of children in China, wanting to see it for myself. When I told Sister Theophane I wanted to be a nun, she enfolded me in her thick black robes and told me I was just a child, but it was a lovely idea.

  "Regardless of what you become," she said, "remember always that to whom much is given, much is expected. God gave you many gifts and it is important that you use them for others as best you can."

  Though we moved again and again throughout the United States until I was 10 years old, my mother and father masterfully created a sense of home, making us feel safe and rooted no matter where we lived. By the time I entered high school, our brood was living in a four-bedroom house in suburban Virginia: It was the place all the neighborhood kids wanted to be. Dreams of the convent had long passed, and I thought much more about boys and parties, though I still expected to change the world.