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

by Jacqueline Novogratz

  Our team has come to see the work not just as investing patient capital. Although this is at the center of our mission, we've learned repeatedly that money is not enough. These young people around the globe are focusing their lives on change because they believe in a world where every single one of us can have access to the services, tools, and skills that will enable all human beings to pursue lives of greater freedom, opportunity, and, ultimately, purpose.

  In one of my last meetings with Dr. Venkataswamy before he died at age 87, as we walked together at 4:30 or 5:00 in the morning, I asked him what he thought about God. He was quiet for a moment and then answered, "For me, God exists in that place where all living things are interconnected-and we know it when we feel the divine. For the world to heal its suffering, we need to combine tough determination and bring solutions to poverty with this sense of ourselves not as isolated individuals, but as beings who need one another and depend on one another."

  A mile or so from Aravind sits the Meenakshi Temple, built in the 15th century, the world's largest Hindu temple with a capacity of a million people. With its thousands of carved and painted gods, its rooms filled with statues, ancient pillars, giant Ganeshas and Shivas carved from granite and marble, the temple has an awesome presence. My favorite room is the hall of 985 pillars: It was explained that 1,000 pillars would be too perfect. Humans must live with their own imperfection.

  Dr. Venkataswamy's beautiful niece Pavi took me to the temple early one morning. As we walked through the massive rooms, she said that when she was a little girl, Dr. Venkataswamy constantly dragged her and her cousins to temples.

  "You need to build a vision," he would tell her, "as if you were building a temple. It takes a focus on that vision, many generations to build it, no single source of leadership. It must be lasting and it must be done for the people."

  Dr. Venkataswamy and John Gardner are no longer alive, but both of them created legacies that will long outlast them, for their visions for change were based not on their own egos but on contributing to the world in a way that released the energies of millions of people. Doing this gave both of these great men deep senses of purpose, meaning, and happiness. As I look to the next generation and the one after that, we are well advised to also look back to those who came before us and imparted such wisdom.

  Build a vision for the people and recognize that no single source of leadership will make it happen: This is our challenge for creating a future in which every human being can participate. Just imagine the inventors, scholars, teachers, artists, and entrepreneurs who will grace the human race once this happens. The first step for each of us is to develop our own moral imagination, the ability to put ourselves in another person's shoes. It sounds so simple, and yet it is perhaps the most difficult thing we can do. It is so much easier to pretend that others are different, that they are happy in their poverty, that their religion makes them too difficult to engage in real conversation, or that their faith or ethnicity or class makes them a danger to us.

  Each of us needs to develop the courage to listen with our whole heart and mind, to give love without asking for thanks in return, and to meet each person as a chance to know a new individual, not as a way of reaffirming prejudices. Our work should remind us all that the poor the world over are our brothers and sisters.

  But empathy is only our starting point. It must be combined with focus and conviction, the toughness to know what needs to get done and the courage to follow through. Today's world needs more than humanitarians. We need individuals who know how to listen and who have real and tangible skills to share. We will succeed only if we fuse a very hardheaded analysis with an equally soft heart.

  There is cause for optimism. Look at the progress in the world over the past 20 years, let alone in the time since my grandmother was born. More than 300 million people have been lifted out of poverty in the past quarter century alone. Think of the democratization of the globe by the Internet, which makes it so much harder for despots to shield their people from the enticements of the free world. Consider our ability to communicate without the intermediation of government. Remark on the tremendous strides made by women across the globe in both the political and economic arenas. Look at young people the world over who are willing to get involved in enterprises whose bottom lines are more about change than strictly about profits. There is reason to believe that people everywhere can lift themselves up, but they have to be given the tools to do so. We can only open doors so that they can walk through them.

  Today we are redefining the geography of community and accepting shared accountability for common human values. We have the chance to extend to every human being on the planet the notion that all men are created equal, and this will require global structures and products we are only beginning to imagine. Though the average citizen cannot, of course, match the enormous gifts made by successful entrepreneurs such as Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, each of us in his or her own way can contribute something by thinking-and acting-like a true global citizen. We have only one world for all of us on earth, and the future really is ours to create, in a world we dare to imagine together.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  fter the Rwandan genocide, in an effort to understand what happened .there, I started writing this book as a letter to myself. It turned into a 10 year love letter of sorts, one written by my pen but infused with the help and wisdom of individuals much wiser and more thoughtful than I could ever be. Thanks to everyone who touched this book in some way.

  Endless gratitude goes to the women of Rwanda, my friends, who spent hours upon hours talking to me, telling me stories, trying to help me understand an almost incomprehensible situation and doing it with grace and love. The women of Duterimbere, and most recently Dativa Mukeshi- mana and Anne Marie Mukarugambwa, spent days discussing the organization's history and future plans with honesty and a true desire to contribute. You reaffirm my faith in the strength of Rwandan women, and I thank you as well as the borrowers we visited over the years, who are all struggling to make better lives against all odds. Jovithe Mukaziya, Revocata Umawutara, and Jeanne d'Arc Uwanyirigira, have been my guides and friends for each of my five trips back to that country over the years. The team at UNICEF, as well as Stephen Lewis, who was country director when I visited, always facilitated my stays and made me feel that I had a second home. Indeed, I've benefited from kindnesses large and small in Rwanda, for which I am grateful.

  The book Leave None to Tell the Story, written by Alison Des Forges with the important organization Human Rights Watch, was very helpful to me and deserves tribute here and for recording Rwanda's tragic history of the genocide.

  Many thanks to Anthony Romero and the Ford Foundation for encouraging me to return to Rwanda after the genocide and supporting those early trips through a grant from the International Institute of Education. Without you, this book would not have been possible.

  Even before there was a book, there were countless drafts, especially about Rwanda, and there were no two people like my sister Beth and my mother who "accompanied me," as the Rwandan women say so beautifully, until the book was fully written. A forever thank-you.

  To my amazing editor, Leigh Haber, you opened my heart with your questions and comments and helped me discover my voice. I am humbled by your clear thinking, precision with words, and deep caring. Thank you.

  Patricia Mulcahy, you have been a true comrade in arms and wonderful partner, helping me shape this book with your generosity, intellect, and spirit. Thanks, too, for introducing me to the best agent I could imagine. Marly Rusoff brought integrity and gutsiness and a powerful sense of solidarity that I will never forget. Thanks to you, Marty. And thanks to Michael Radylescu for his hard work.

  Thanks to the terrific women at Rodale for all of their true support, especially the wonderful, generous and understanding Shannon Welch, Beth Davey, Beth Tarson, and Trina Perrineau.

  Thanks to Sunny Bates, Antonia Bowring, Karie Brown, Peggy Clark, Katherine Fulton, Leslie Gimbel, J
essi Hempel, Saj-Nicole Joni, Afshan Khan, Otho Kerr, Geraldine Laybourne, Emily Levine, John House, Bruce Nussbaum, Bilge Bassani, Elaine Pagels, Chee Pearlman, Andrea Soros, Cyndi Stivers, Dan Toole, Keith Yamashita, and Emory Van Cleve for reading so many drafts, making introductions, helping me move forward. Seth Godin, you are a brilliant light who gave me strength-and a mantra to keep it simple even if I couldn't. I am awed by your generosity. Dominique Browning, you helped turn the stories into a single narrative, teaching me more than you know along the way. An enormous thank-you.

  MY DEEPEST THANKS GO to the entire Acumen Fund team, always and every day, for the work you do with so much discipline, grace, joy, and passion. It is one of the greatest honors of my life to work with each and every one of you, and I thank you heartily for your support. Special thanks to Mariko Tada for insights, care, and all you did on so many levels; to James Wu for your tireless patience, endless copying, and help with juggling appointments; to Molly Alexander, Catherine Casey, Nadege Joseph, Ann MacDougall, Brian Trelstad, and Yasmina Zaidman for reading drafts and giving feedback; to Katharine Boies for your great energy and assistance; and to Ann Rahman, Varun Sahni, Nthenya Mule, and the country teams for taking such exquisite care of me and helping me find a sense of home and insights in each of your countries. This book is in so many ways from and for all of you and those you inspire.

  Enormous thanks to Acumen Fund's amazing board members past and present. Margo Alexander, our board chair, took me under her wing, introduced me to possible editors, read early drafts, and always believed. Thanks as well to Angela Blackwell, David Blood, Hunter Boll, Andrea Soros-Colombel, Stuart Davidson, Roberta Katz, Bill Mayer, Cate Muther, Bob Niehaus, Ali Siddiqui, Joseph Stiglitz, and Tae Yoo. To my brother Michael Novogratz, thank you for the unwavering support you've given for so long with so much heart.

  It goes without saying that I send my deep appreciation to all of Acumen Fund's investees, including those not mentioned in the book. All of you are powerful models for change and I'm proud to work with you. Thanks especially to the teams at A to Z, Drishtee, IDE India, Jamii Bora, Kashf, Saiban, TRDP, and WaterHealth International for your hospitality, candor, and openness. We'll change the world together.

  THANK YOU TO ACUMEN FUND'S founding partners: the Alexander Family Foundation, the Apex Foundation, Hunter and Pam Boll, the Cisco Systems Foundation, Jerry Hirsch, Jill Iscol, Charles and Roberta Katz, the Kellogg Foundation, Laura and Gary Lauder, Jennifer McCann, Cate Muther, the Novogratz Foundation, the Phalarope Foundation, the Sigrid Rausing Trust, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Sapling Foundation, Lindsay and Brian Shea, Andrea Soros-Colombel and Eric Colombel, the TOSA Foundation, George and Patty Wellde, and William Wright II. Thanks to our stewards, Abraaj Capital, Peter and Devon Briger, the d.o.b. Foundation, GAIN, Lehman Brothers, Jim Leitner, Polly Guth, the Lundin for Africa Foundation, the Aman Foundation, Raj and Asha Rajaratnam, Amy Robbins, Niklas and Catherine Zennstrom, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Google.org, the Skoll Foundation, and the Woodcock Foundation. No one builds an enduring institution alone, and you have helped in so many ways. And thank you, too, to the Stanford GSB and the Aspen Institute for the inspiration and sense of community I always receive.

  My greatest thanks goes to my family, who taught me to love the world: my parents, Barbara and Bob; my siblings, Robert, Michael, Elizabeth, John, Amy, and Matthew; and my in-laws, Sukey, Cortney, and Tina. And finally, to my darling Chris, for challenging me and supporting me, for reading through endless drafts and always improving them, for your patience, your kindness, and your love. You are my rock.

  M Y UNCLE E D PASSED away last year, but it is to him that I will always be indebted for the blue sweater and everything it continues to mean.

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