The Blue Sweater is Jacqueline Novogratz's, founder of the Acumen Fund, personal story of how she wanted to change the world. The first half of the book covers her experiences starting from post-grad life trying to find a job to working with the Rockefeller foundation and creating philanthropist workshops to educate them on the best ways of handling problems.
Jacqueline's journey began with her job as an international banker at Chase Manhattan Bank. When she visited Brazil she realized that there was extreme poverty and suggested that Chase should create loans for the poor to enable them to start projects. When her proposition was rejected she moved on the African Development Bank in which she worked as a ambassador for women. Jacqueline moves on from this job to others that allow her to work with women to empower them and give them tools and knowledge to become self-sufficient. By the end of the first half of the book , Jacqueline returns home to get her MBA from the Stanford School of Business and ends up meeting Professor Emeritus John Gardner who becomes her mentor and encourages her to take a fellowship with the Rockefeller Foundation.
I admire Jacqueline's persistence throughout her journey so far because addressing poverty and the income distribution gap are perhaps the most difficult tasks to take on. Micro finance institutions, like the one she tried setting up in Rwanda, are usually used in developing countries to provide the poor with small, low-interest loans but few models have been successful in their business models. Jacqueline is trying to solve this problem, as well as address others, by incorporating a bottom up approach (citizen based) to design micro finance models that will benefit the citizens as well as the banks. As she tries to create better development programs for the poor, she also learns from her failures what doesn't work to continually readjust her models. She also perseveres even when faced by blatant disdain from the women she is trying to help. The women were resistant to the idea of accepting help from her because they perceive her help as a Western intrusion. To address this problem, Jacqueline finds that it is important to listen to the local women and their needs to build assistance programs that help them and are not dominated entirely by Western models of growth. She puts in so much effort to try and make the lives of the world's poor better and is trying to truly change the world, even if it is one step at a time.
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