Get Going

I have been moved to tears more times than I’d like to admit this week. There have been numerous unexpected and sometimes unwelcome changes in my life perhaps helping to create a more emotionally in-tune mood, but most tears have been of deep joy, gratitude and humility. Ironically, while resisting every change coming into my own life, I’ve read with fervor about how to create positive change to address poverty. Perhaps I need to look a bit more closely at my own areas of “poverty”—but more on that another time.

Changing the World through Acronyms

Today I finished Jacqueline Novogratz’s The Blue Sweater, about her life up to and including founding Acumen Fund after many amazing experiences in Africa. In it, she makes the case for using the market as one of many important tools to address poverty. This summer, I get to participate in that very approach to development.

I leave for two months in rural South Africa in about a month. I will be working with an amazing nonprofit, ThinkImpact, and the book was part of our required reading. ThinkImpact has done nothing but impress me so far with their inclusive approach to social entrepreneurship in development. Our work as Advisors will be to teach ThinkImpact Innovation Institute Scholars (American undergrads—mine will all be from Northwestern’s Global Engagement Summer Institute (GESI)—go cats!) about social entrepreneurship. The Scholars use IDEO’s Human Centered Design Toolkit and partner with local villagers to focus on “Asset Based Community Development” (ABCD), building and improving businesses that serve the community. This approach is exactly what the book speaks about in focusing not on “need” which creates a cycle of dependency, but rather on the assets a community already possess to build the economy and keep community development in their own hands.

Blue Sweater Moments

Novogratz’s book title stems from a moment she had walking down the street in Kigali, Rwanda where a young boy walked by wearing a handmade sweater which she immediately recognized from her own childhood and she’d donated it over a decade before—solidifying for her just how interconnected our world truly is. I had my very own “blue sweater” moment on my way to the airport this morning. After a glorious week visiting my best friend, I was glowing with the deep gratitude of spending time with someone with whom you share your soul. Contentedly riding to the airport in the shared van, I read my book as the van filled stop after stop. For our final stop the driver told me we had a pick up of 7 people and I thought, “My that’s a large family.” Turns out, it was a large family—and I’m already a part of it. When we made the stop, in piled a jovial group chatting and joking about their time in Miami, and I looked up surprised to recognize more than a few faces in the car. My former employer, College Summit, had just finished training for their annual workshop season. I excitedly caught up on the news about the training and the national network of offices I’d worked with before starting my MBA at Thunderbird.

The Blue Sweater moved me story after story in reminding me of my brief, but life-changing time in Rwanda and inspiring me for my upcoming time in South Africa with an organization I can believe in with both mind and heart. Running into part of the larger College Summit “Family” reminded me of how interconnected my life is, too. I had the incredible privilege of growing up in a country that values freedom, in a family that values love and education and with friends that value each other. I have been both well taken care of and well loved. Not only that, I have clean water to drink every day, a malaria free shelter to sleep in, and a choice (to a certain degree) of what I want to do with my life. I am very, very blessed. What’s more, I’m gaining my MBA from a school that recognizes the interconnectedness of the world and values it just as much as I do, so much so that we are required to go abroad and learn a second language as part of our degree. And I am looking forward to many more “blue sweater moments” as I continue to expand my global family.

To be continued…