The Blue Sweater: Bridging the Gap Between Rich and Poor in an Interconnected World by Jacqueline Novogratz.

5/5 rating. 284 pages.

Book #4 of 2021. Read January 17, 2021.

This is an amazing, powerful, and illustrative read about Jacqueline’s work to help provide skills, access, and dignity to the global underprivileged.

Jacqueline is truly everything that I want to be. She’s obviously very intelligent and has a heart of gold that drew her from a high-paying banking job, into working with the poor throughout Africa (and later all over the world).

This book is a refreshing look at how to best help these people. Though Jacqueline starts her career in service trying to push through her ideas for how to help the poor, she realizes that so often, the presumptuous feelings of people who think they know how to fix poverty are usually only a detriment. People in poverty are resilient, smart, and capable, they just often need the aid of infrastructure or small cash inflows to make a difference in their lives.

Jacqueline realizes that there is certainly a place for philanthropy, but that so often, what is needed more, is support for local entrepreneurs. Instead of giving money to projects that are not really helping people, she does the unbelievable and gives loans to these people, and charges interest. Though many can’t believe it, the belief, helpful nudges, and accountability placed on those in poverty are an important path to include in our toolbox to end poverty.

It’s clear that Jacqueline has the right idea of compassion and empathy: “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.”

I LOVED this book and recommend that everyone take time to read it, then think about how you can contribute to bridging the gap between the rich and poor, and push for the end of poverty.

Quotes:

“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.”

“‘Regardless of what you become,’ she said, ‘remember always that to whom much is given, much is expected.’”

“I swore to myself that I would never acquiesce to mediocrity – and I couldn’t imagine stifling my laughter in order to succeed.”

“And there is no time like the present to start living your dream.”

“‘I’m not ready to invest in anything permanent yet,’ she told me, pausing before adding, ‘but nothing really is permanent, is it?’”

“‘The most we can offer you is our food and hospitality,’ Cissy told me. ‘But nothing else has much value, anyway,’ she laughed.”

“You must do the thing which you think you cannot do.”

“‘We are not handing out gifts,’ she would say, ‘but are bringing forth the gifts inside the people themselves.’”

“‘You should never worry about such small things,’ she counseled. ‘Language has very little to do with the words you say and everything with how you say them.’”

“I didn’t fathom then that most big dreams originate in someone’s living room with a small group of people, regardless of where they come from or how they are dressed.”

“Indeed, today’s most privileged individuals are often more comfortable with elites from other countries than they are with their own less-privileged fellow citizens.”

“Poverty won’t allow him to lift up his head; dignity won’t allow him to bow it down.”

“Her moral philosophy was that we show the world who we are through our actions, not merely through words or intentions.”

“Six hundred and fifty dollars a month in charity to keep 20 women earning 50¢ a day. You could triple their incomes if you just gave them the money. It was a perfect illustration of why traditional charity too often fails: In this case, well-intentioned people gave poor women something ‘nice’ to do, such as making cookies or crafts, and subsidized the project until there was no more money left, then moved on to a new idea. This is a no-fail way to keep already poor people mired in poverty.”

“On the other hand, I began to understand that I could have listened better, for listening is not just having the patience to wait, it is also learning how to ask the questions themselves.”

“For the first time, their incomes allowed them to decide when to say yes and when to say no. Money is freedom and confidence and choice. And choice is dignity.”

“The story of the bakery was one of the human transformation that comes with being seen, being held accountable, succeeding. I had the privilege of watching the women acquire a sense of dignity once they were given tools for self-sufficiency, and I learned that language is perhaps only half the equation in how people communicate with one another.”

“You see, I want a lot

Perhaps I want everything:

the darkness that comes with every infinite fall and the shivering blaze of every step up.” – Rainer Maria Rilke

“How you see where you are always depends on where you’ve been.”

“The places I’d been had changed me more than I’d impacted them, but I’d also seen what a small group of people could do to change the world.”

“The developing world needed management skills. It needed people who knew how to start and build companies, not just people with good intentions.”

“Why do some people stop growing at age 30, just going from work to the couch and television, when others stay vibrant, curious, almost childlike, into their eighties and nineties?”

“As he once said of a friend of his, John made the world better just by being in it.” – John Gardner

“Life at your age should be about putting new and different tools in your toolbox.” – John Gardner

“Only by knowing ourselves can we truly understand others – and knowing from where you come is an important part of knowing who you are.” – John Gardner

“You should focus on being more interested than interesting…” – John Gardner

“[P]hilanthropists should find innovations that release the energies of people. Individuals don’t want to be taken care of – they need to be given a chance to fulfill their own potential. Too many projects create dependence that helps no one in the long run.” – John Gardner

“Then think about the choir. Think about community. People need to feel responsible to one another. Otherwise, we will breed successful individuals who don’t feel connected enough to the greater society.” – John Gardner

“There are only two mistakes one can make along the road to truth; not going all the way, and not starting.” – Buddha

“Individuals in the dominant group assume that the rules work because they’ve always seemed fair to them. On the other hand, people who view themselves as outsiders have had to learn to navigate the dominant culture in order to be successful. Becoming attuned to how others function and make decisions is a critical skill set we need to inculcate in our next generation of leaders.”

“Just give people a way to walk so that eventually they can run, and then you’ll see them dance. Some of them will even fly.”

“The question wasn’t whether I was privileged, but whether that privilege disqualified me from effectively running the program.”

“We need to ask more questions about who is awarded public contracts, who gains, who loses, and whether or not our public funds are doing the most possible for the most people rather than benefiting just a few.”

“And with fear began the disinformation campaigns, the lying, and the manipulation by Rwanda’s leaders to instill even more defensiveness – and paranoia – in an already insecure citizenry.”

“If she could endure such suffering and still sit there with a beatific smile, what could I do from my own position of privilege?”

“Death was a given. But I would not give up my dignity.”

“In the end, goodness triumphs over the bad. It is our challenge to do good and to serve others without waiting for the good to be returned. I’m convinced that those people who cultivate universal love will have good fortune on earth. In serving others, I found light in a place of utmost darkness.”

“We listen to one another and look into one another’s eyes and we see suffering. It is that suffering that binds us. It is that suffering that reminds us that we are all human.”

“In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

“‘Having someone believe in you makes all the difference,’ she told me.”

“There are none more dangerous to extremists than moderates.”

“At the same time, our world’s challenge is not simply in determining how we punish, but instead in how we prevent the kinds of atrocities that can come only from a deep-seated fear of the Other in our midst. Such fear is fueled in a world where the rich feel above the system and the poor feel entirely left out.”

“What does it matter who accepts me? Most of all, I must accept myself.”

“I have only a simple dream: to get old without ever having to beg and to live without having to see that terrible violence again.”

“Poverty is too complex to be answered with a one-size-fits-all approach…”

“If we have learned anything, it is the horror that can happen when people don’t think for themselves, but instead follow authority blindly.”

“We can end poverty if we start by looking at all human beings as part of a single global community that recognizes that everyone deserves a chance to build a life worth living.”

“In the course of history, there comes a time when humanity is called to shift to a new level of consciousness, to reach a higher moral ground. A time when we have to shed our fear and give hope to each other. That time is now.” – Wangari Maathai

“‘Just start,’ he said. ‘Don’t wait for perfection. Just start and let the work teach you. No one expects you to get it right in the very beginning, and you’ll learn more from your mistakes than you will from your early successes anyway. So stop worrying so much and just look at your best bets and go.’”

“‘Women come to work early and they stay late,’ he said. ‘They are very serious about what they do and I think they work harder to succeed. Apart from that, most of a dollar earned by a woman goes right to the family. It’s not the same for men. So everyone benefits when we support more women to do this work.’”

“You know, there are so many paths in a life. But the best are the ones where you are living the truth and searching for good and giving to others.”

“As we walked across the field, we spoke about the importance of this first house – how crucial it was to come and celebrate because life is short, victories are hard-won, and hope comes not from playing it safe, but from working on good in the world, as my angel had reminded me at the airport.”

“Poverty is about not only income levels, but also the lack of freedom that comes from physical insecurity.”

“Anecdotes are powerful in that they show possibility.”

“Few will have the greatness to bend history itself; but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation.” – Robert Kennedy

“I’ve learned that there is no currency like trust and no catalyst like hope.”

“And the most important quality we must all strengthen in ourselves is that of deep human empathy, for that will provide the most hope of all – and the foundation for our collective survival.”

“The world will not change with inspiration alone; rather, it requires systems, accountability, and clear measures of what works and what doesn’t.”

“More than any academic subject, judgment, empathy, focus, patience, and courage should be studied and cultivated.”

“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.”

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