The Blue Sweater: Bridging the Gap Between Rich and Poor in an Interconnected World (44 page)

I felt Ingrid's sense of hope, global citizenship, and human connection when I met Maryam, a little girl in northern Kashmir who lived with her father, trying to survive in a makeshift house after the devastating earthquake in northern Pakistan. I noticed that beside the temporary shelter for her family was a miniature one, like a little dollhouse.

When I asked who would live there, Maryam, who was standing with her little sister, responded, "Our dolls."

She pointed to a group of cloth dolls she had created. For each one, she wrapped fabric around a small stick, creating a tiny head, and then dressed the body with colorful fabric so that each doll had a dress and a veil for propriety. She had cut out faces from magazines and pasted them on the little heads. There was a glamorous blonde in a veil who reminded me of the heroine of Bewitched, a brunette, and even a handsome man. The levels of creativity and humor were thrilling.

Nine-year-old Maryam was wearing a white headband and a pale green gossamer veil that hung loosely over her dark brown, shoulderlength hair. Her clothes were pretty and clean, and I noticed that her hands were hennaed with daisylike flowers.

I asked who did her henna.

"Myself," she said shyly. "I like beauty."

Her 6-year-old sister Mona hung on our every word.

I told her I liked beauty, too, and that she was an artist and an architect. Blushing, she pointed to the temporary shelter she had built next to the permanent dollhouse, which had a corrugated tin roof and plastic sheeting on the walls and held a small wooden bed and a water jug just like her family's own shelter. Despite living in a conservative area where women were rarely given the same chances as men, Maryam could dream aloud because her father was different. You could see it in the way he spoke of his future, in his actions, and in his insistence on educating his daughters. Maryam also had a spark inside that made her stand out.

I asked if she wanted to become a businesswoman and if she would consider selling me one of her dolls-and, if so, for how much. She replied that she would gladly give me the dolls as a gift.

"Oh, no," I said, and tried to explain the value of a small business transaction, of selling just one or two dolls that she could remake and maybe sell again. She shyly nodded her agreement, and I gave her and her sister each a 100-rupee note and a pen.

The girls looked at the crisp notes in their hands and ran into the temporary house, returning with a bag to make this a truly professional transaction. She would have let me choose whichever dolls I wanted. I didn't want to take her favorites, so I asked her to choose those she didn't like as well. I received the gorgeous blonde and the brunette, leaving her 15 or 20 family members.

Despite the geography, cultures, years, and religions that divide them, Maryam and Beatrice have a common spirit. Neither is looking for a handout, yet both are constrained by societies that see them as "others," as poor females with little to offer. As I worked with Acumen, I met more and more individuals like Maryam and Beatrice. Each time I did, it strengthened my resolve to find more solutions that started with the poor as customers. At the end of the day, finding the answers to a fractured world must begin with encouraging and honoring the discipline and ambition, hard work and generosity of so many billions who want the same things we all do.

There is a powerful role both for the market and for philanthropy to play in creating this future. Philanthropy alone lacks the feedback mechanisms of markets, which are the best listening devices we have; and yet markets alone too easily leave the most vulnerable behind. By thinking about the Beatrices and Maryams of the world as our ultimate customers, Acumen can support entrepreneurs who have the same values in creating solutions that will enable the poor to help themselves.

The entrepreneurs who will help us create a future for all people are individuals who exist in every country on earth. They are the Roshaneh Zafars and the Dr. Venkataswamys, the Amitabha Sadangis and Dr. Sonos. They are the ones who see a problem and don't stop working on it until it is solved. They refuse petty ideologies and reject trite assumptions. They balance their passion for change with an ability to get things done. Mostly, they believe fundamentally in the inherent capacity of every human being to contribute.

At the same time, today's most effective leaders have a pragmatic bottom-line orientation that results in focusing on measuring what they accomplish, building institutions that can sustain themselves long after their founders have gone. The world will not change with inspiration alone; rather, it requires systems, accountability, and clear measures of what works and what doesn't. Our most effective leaders, therefore, will strengthen their knowledge of how to build organizations while also having the vision and heart to help people imagine that change is possible in their lives.

A potential donor asked me if I really believe we can teach leadership. "Leaders are born, not made," he said decidedly.

I not only disagree with that but also believe that we can-and mustinfuse our young people with the qualities of leadership. More than any academic subject, judgment, empathy, focus, patience, and courage should be studied and cultivated. As our world gets more complex, smart and skilled generalists who know how to listen to many perspectives across multiple disciplines will become more critical than ever.

In 2006, we started the Acumen Fund fellows program to build a corps of leaders with the skills, networks, and moral imagination to help solve the tough problems of our time by using their understanding of how to build sustainable businesses that are appropriate for local contexts. The program is a mix of action and reflection, for it is much easier to teach a young person how to create a spreadsheet and do financial analysis than it is to navigate the emotional and political labyrinths that so often dominate developing economies.

Each year, we select approximately 10 extraordinary young people between the ages of 25 and 45. They apply from all over the world, bringing with them experiences ranging from working in investment banks, to serving as doctors in rural villages, to starting their own organizations. After spending 2 months in New York learning about the work we do and meeting dozens of leaders, they spend days reading and discussing literature and poetry-Aristotle and Martin Luther King Jr., Gandhi, Aung San Sun Kyi, and Nelson Mandela, among others-to help them begin to hone and then ground their own philosophies for change in the pragmatic realities of the work we do.

On the third day of the fellowship in New York, we take away their cell phones and wallets, give them only $5 and a New York City transit pass with two rides on it, and ask them to come back at the end of the day ready to share their perspectives and insights on how New York City's services for the poor might be better designed if low-income people were considered customers, not just charitable recipients. There is always nervousness in the morning as the fellows leave the building for parts unknown.

They return in the evening with wide eyes and thoughtful gazes, often carrying piles of documents that low-income people are required to fill out for each service they need.

"I worked as a management consultant at McKinsey and went to Harvard," said Adrien, a fellow from France, "and I found the reams of paper you need to navigate confusing. Imagine how you would feel if you were homeless and uneducated."

Catherine, an American, spent 7 hours sitting in a hospital emergency room in Harlem, listening to the stories of a man who waited patiently alongside her.

"By the end of the day, I was so frustrated, wondering what would have happened if I were really sick. But more tragic was the acceptance by so many people, as if their energy for change had been sapped from them."

Wangari from Kenya sat for hours in a soup kitchen with a group of women, listening to them tell her how this was the only place they felt they belonged. She puzzled over the difference between Kenyan notions of community and those in the United States. "Maybe there is room for more emphasis on community here and not just on the individual," she mused.

I loved listening to them, for they were learning in my own country what I had seen in poor communities the world over.

Beyond young people, there is a groundswell of successful individuals who want something more than the financial rewards of professional success. Neurological and psychological studies on human happiness bear out the fact that after reaching a certain financial level, an individ- ual's receiving an incremental dollar does not correlate with the same increase in happiness. Moreover, scientists are finding, not surprisingly, that the one factor that does bring greater happiness is serving others. Of course, these scientists define happiness, much as Aristotle did, not as an episodic moment of bubbly lightness, but as a deep sense of meaning, purpose, and, ultimately, abiding joy.

Seth Godin is not someone who immediately jumps to mind when thinking about developing rural economies. He is a New Yorker, a hero of Silicon Valley, a marketing guru and author of the book Purple Cow who also pens a highly popular blog. He has a capacious brain and a heart of gold to match. After working on global issues for Acumen Fund, he traveled to India for the first time in his life to spend a week with some of our entrepreneurs on his own time, at his own expense, offering his consulting services for free.

Satyan Mishra, the entrepreneur who founded Drishtee, was open to Seth's key insight from the visit: that most of the "kiosk entrepreneurs" are, in fact, much like McDonald's franchisees, seeing the opportunity for business and income. Consequently, Satyan agreed, each franchisee should be given a precise blueprint for operations that details everything from services offered to marketing strategies. A fraction of franchisees will indeed be more entrepreneurial: I met one who sent fliers to schools so students would bring them home to their parents. This technique worked well for the kiosk owner and would be shared across the network: systems matter.

Satyan and Seth now talk regularly. Both are richer for it. So are the more than 7,500,000 people in some of India's poorest villages who benefit from their collaboration.

Making the collaboration work means building a relationship based on trust and respect. Seth thinks Satyan is one of India's great entrepreneurs, one made more amazing by his focus on helping people get out of poverty. Satyan gains immensely from hearing business success stories and insights from Seth's experiences with global corporations. Neither is always right, nor does either have all the answers. But together, they are a lot smarter for knowing one another.

What is important is that individuals bring what they do best to the world. After the Pakistan earthquake, I met Adrian Asdar, a contracting genius with laughing eyes, an energetic spirit, and a quick and generous smile. He was standing in his makeshift office in Muzaffarabad wearing a red-checkered scarf around his neck, a sweatshirt, and jeans. While overseeing the building of a new hotel in town and still owning a number of companies that he founded, mostly in Karachi, he decided after hearing about the earthquake to give a year of his life to making a contribution.

He committed to the Citizens Foundation, an NGO in Pakistan, that he would oversee the building of 5,000 houses for people who had lost everything. To do this, he brought together a band of volunteers from Pakistan and the diaspora-as far away as New York-young people who wanted to do something positive for their country. I asked one of the young men why he was working 16 hours a day in the cold for no money and no social life. He told me he was a burgher in Karachi, meaning a "rich, spoiled kid." He had attended a boarding school in Kent, enjoyed the pleasures of life, and didn't do much of anything, by his own definition. I told him he must now feel like a rich man.

He looked at me and responded, "Actually, I feel like a elan ... finally."

By the time I'd met Adnan, he'd overseen the building of 1,000 temporary houses to get people through the winter. His success was due not only to his good heart, but also to his being one of the country's best project managers. The experiences of Seth and Adnan and others like them make me wonder if there isn't a place for a senior fellows program to attract the best and brightest midcareer and retired professionals who are seeking greater purpose in a world in need of their skills.

Every one of us on earth, rich or poor, has something important to give. Acumen Fund's chief administrative officer and general counsel Ann MacDougall joined after a 17-year career at PricewaterhouseCoopers, where she held a variety of important positions, including global deputy general counsel. Her 12-year-old daughter, Charlotte, an angel-faced beauty with bright green eyes, decided she wanted to contribute as well, so she held a bake sale at a New York craft fair, and invited local potters to give a percentage of their day's profits. With their help, Charlotte was able to raise more than $350 in a single day. She saw what she could accomplish, taught people in her own words about this work that serves the poor, and inspired a whole lot of adults.

I stood at the podium at Acumen Fund's Investor Gathering, thinking about the hundreds of people who have contributed to making a collective impact in the world. Because of efforts big and small, from multimillion-dollar contributions to one envelope we received stuffed with 20 $1 bills from a 7-year-old girl, by 2008 Acumen Fund had been able to approve more than $40 million in investments in 40 enterprises serving the poor. Through the entrepreneurs who run those companies, we were able to help create more than 23,000 jobs and bring basic services like water-and therefore health-to tens of millions of verylow-income people around the world. Today, more than 350,000 people in rural India are buying clean water for the first time in their lives. Thirty million people have access to lifesaving malaria bed nets each year. A hundred and fifty thousand farmers have doubled or tripled their family incomes because of drip irrigation. And this is just the start, the beginning of our own journey, in which entrepreneurial initiative is paving the way for significant social change.