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

by Jacqueline Novogratz

  With each passing week, the news from Rwanda worsened: People were killing each other with machetes, studded clubs, with anything they could find. Longtime neighbors murdered one another; in some cases, fathers and mothers killed their own children. Though the stories seemed inhuman, impossible, we'd heard these tales before, in Germany and in Cambodia. On television I watched foreigners line up to board planes, leaving terrified Rwandans behind to face unknown fates. The memory of the Rwandan woman who'd told me that expatriates come and never stay haunted me-it still does. I wondered what I would have done if I had been there and felt ashamed that I wasn't sure of the answer.

  My dreams filled with images of dead bodies, of being trapped beneath them, screaming to be heard. Inevitably, I would awake shaking like a leaf in a storm. As I struggled to comprehend these horrors, I realized that I didn't even know whether many of the women with whom I'd worked were Hutu or Tutsi.

  I wrote the following on April 14, 1994, 8 days after the plane carrying the presidents of Rwanda and Burundi was shot down, unleashing the genocide:

  Rwanda is exploding in an anarchical bloodbath of rampant, wanton killing. More than 20,000 lie dead, most of them murdered by machetes and spears. The killers see the eyes, hear the screams, feel the metal pushing through bone and marrow and sinew. In a town like Kigali, the killers know their victims. They have seen them in the street, said hello to them in the marketplace, exchanged pleasantries. Killers are related to their victims-husbands killing wives, brothers killing sisters. And the women are killing, too. I don't know how to think about the carnage in the city I knew so well-or at least I thought I did.

  My friends ash my opinion, pushing me on why we should even be involved in countries "who refuse to move into the 20th century, let alone the 21st." All of your work, what has happened to it, they ash. I don't have a good answer for them, only that I know we could have avoided this if we'd paid more attention.

  If only we had listened.

  On the first day of the genocide, the army captured 10 "Blue Helmets," UN peacekeepers who were armed but not allowed to use their weapons. The Rwandan army castrated, mutilated, and killed the boy soldiers, showing the entire world their viciousness. The Hutu Power government of Rwanda understood that after the horrors of Somalia, the United States and Europe would be stopped dead in their tracks by images of 10 maimed blue-eyed blonds. As is so often the case, the supposedly insignificant understood the psychology of the strong, while the strong didn't have a clue about the other.

  Had the West retaliated powerfully, immediately, and deliberately, even killing a few warriors early in the conflict, hundreds of thousands of lives might have been saved. Instead, bureaucrats argued endlessly until, in a country of 8 million, 800,000 were killed in 100 days. In some areas of Rwanda, 75 percent of Tutsis were massacred. Only near the end did the US government concede that this was not war, but genocide. By then, it was too late.

  After the genocide ended in July, I wanted to work in the refugee camps, where I'd learned that Liliane and Prudence were living. Dan had been transferred from Tanzania to Rwanda to lead UNICEF's efforts at reconstruction, and I knew he would have hired me had I wanted to return. My mother and I argued fiercely about whether or not I should go. She felt strongly that I should focus on my best use, while I thought the notion of "best use" was arrogant in the face of an emergency. She said I'd made a commitment at the Rockefeller Foundation to run the Philanthropy Workshop and needed to honor it, emphasizing that what had happened in Rwanda should inspire me to be smarter in my thinking-and action-about solving problems of poverty. She argued that we all have different ways of using ourselves, and mine was needed for the longer-term view. I finally agreed not to go, though to this day I wonder if I made the right call.

  It was against the backdrop of the horror of genocide that I now concentrated on understanding the potential of philanthropy to effect change in the world. Rwanda would always remind me of how serious the work of change is, how we have to build accountability into all aspects of development-and of philanthropy-and how the world really is interconnected. I would feel ashamed when I would hear people say "never again" in the media, feeling that these words were empty unless we helped build a stronger world economy in which all people could feel they had a vested interest in society.

  Had the majority of Rwandans believed that they could change their lives through their own efforts and earn enough income to send their children to school, provide for their health, and plan for the future, it would have been much more difficult for morally corrupt politicians to instill a fear so deep it led to genocide. Private initiative and innovation driven by philanthropy were, I believed, our best hope for finding those ways to give the poor the opportunities they deserved.

  In the years I oversaw the Philanthropy Workshop, I met wonderful people who would become colleagues and friends at a time when philanthropy was undergoing rapid change-moving from being dominated by a few older foundations to a flourishing sector driven by innovative individuals who had earned significant wealth and wanted both more involvement and more accountability in their charitable work. Ultimately, some of the workshop members would work with me in creating and building Acumen Fund, bringing their own creativity and networks to a shared endeavor to change the world.

  While I was transitioning the Philanthropy Workshop to new leadership, the president of the Rockefeller Foundation, Peter Goldmark, and his able, elegant senior vice president, Angela Glover Blackwell, approached me to take on a new challenge. The Los Angeles riots had revealed America's fault lines of race, ideology, and class, which were growing in the 1990s. Angela and Peter worried that America needed to revitalize itself as an increasingly diverse democracy in a global society.

  Angela spoke to me of "minoritarian leadership": "America needs leaders who are comfortable with diversity," she said. "The country itself is changing demographically, and we have a chance to play a different kind of leadership role in the world. I believe that women and people of color might have an advantage in leading diversity because they've been outsiders by definition."

  I agreed with Angela, but wanted to learn more about the term "minority leadership." She answered, "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."

  I thought of Rwanda again, of how the tiny country understood the psychology of the West and acted on it by castrating the Belgian UN soldiers. The leaders of Rwanda knew that the killing would unnerve the United States, especially given the public's response to US soldiers being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu, Somalia, months earlier. For its part, the West had paid no heed to Rwandan culture. Intuitively, I understood what Angela was talking about, but I wasn't sure how to implement it.

  Peter and Angela asked me to create a program to identify, link, educate, and inspire extraordinary young American leaders who represented diversity across boundaries of class, race, religion, and ideology. The program should be part-time, they said, and it should be transformative. Rockefeller would provide a budget, and I was to lead a team and make it happen. I felt flattered that they'd thought of me to do this, but also sure they'd found exactly the wrong person. What did I really know about leadership? I asked them.

  Wearing a black turtleneck and skirt that made her appear even more regal than usual, Angela smiled and told me that of course I knew something about leadership. "The issue is the new kind of leadership we need. You know how to listen. To do what you've done, you know what it means to collaborate across lines of difference and to be unafraid to take on big challenges. What you don't know intuitively, you will learn. The world needs this new program. We'll help you. Just say yes."

  John Gardner told me that when you are young,
sometimes the most important thing you can do is find the best leaders and follow them. Here were two individuals I admired deeply. Even though I couldn't see fully what I would be creating, I accepted on faith-and never looked back.

  Angela helped me build a diverse team that included Jessie King, an Outward Bound instructor, and Rockefeller colleagues. I worked closely with Lisa Sullivan, a grassroots organizer who had worked with Marian Wright Edelman, founder of the Children's Defense Fund. An American original by all accounts, Lisa was brilliant and powerful, with a political science degree from Yale. She was also black, gay, and built like a truck driver. She always wore mascara and dainty earrings and could beat any kid in the hood in a game of pool while simultaneously winning him over to her side. I'd never met anyone like her.

  At our first meeting, we eyed one another warily as we discussed our goals for the program and how to achieve them. We surprised ourselves by agreeing on the basics: The program would be action oriented; focus on solving problems, not just discussing them; and include reading and reflection. Two of my great privileges had been to serve as a teaching fellow at Harvard with the reknowned child psychologist Robert Coles, and to participate in an executive program at the Aspen Institute. Both experiences had taught me the power of using literature and great philosophical and political works as springboards into conversations about values and principles. I agreed with Plato that our world needs philosopher-kings and felt it was critical to combine action and reflection in building future leaders.

  From hundreds of nominations, each year our team selected a group of 24 activist-leaders from all walks of life: community organizers, human rights activists, social entrepreneurs, even a fighter pilot with the US Marines. Each one was extraordinary in his or her own right. I loved knowing Rita Bright, a tall, thin, formidable African American community leader from Washington, DC. One of 10 children, Rita had lost a number of siblings to drugs and alcohol. She understood the low-income neighborhoods of Washington, earned the respect of the young men there, and made miracles happen on a regular basis. Once, she convinced the mothers in one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in DC to stand on the street corners where their sons dealt drugs in order to shame their boys into going home with them. She also started a community laundromat, believing fervently in the power of enterprise and the philosophy that God helps those who help themselves.

  "Of course," she would add when describing the small business, "everyone needs a hand to get started. There is no embarrassment in using grants to train people and even to put the initial investment into these neighborhood businesses. 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."

  When the group of 24 Next Generation Leadership (NGL) fellows visited South Africa, Rita met a group of very poor farmers who could barely afford the feed they needed for their pigs. Moved equally by their plight and their ambition, she pledged a sum of money to help, explaining in a matter-of-fact way that she would skip lunch twice a week and give the money slowly. "I've never felt as rich as I do right now after seeing what poverty really looks like," she continued, conveying with her eyes her deep and firsthand knowledge of how much crueler the poverty of a broken spirit can be than the poverty of income alone.

  In spite of the privilege I found in knowing and working with the wise Rita Brights of the world, I still made every mistake in the book. In the first year I allowed NGL's group of 24 fellows to be held hostage in their discussions by a small group of activists who verbally attacked any thoughts with which they disagreed. Though extremely talented in their fields, those individuals rarely offered constructive solutions to problems and, ironically, represented exactly what we were trying to avoid in the program: leaders who were more comfortable flinging opinions than basing arguments on principles and facts.

  My biggest flaw was that I was not being true to myself. In that first year, a young African American man intimidated me in front of the fellows by claiming I could never lead the group properly because I was white, privileged, and connected to the Rockefeller establishment, which he believed had done great damage to the world. Instead of confronting him directly, I stared like a deer caught in the headlights and tried defending myself as someone who had worked hard to cover university tuition and make my way in the world. I could almost feel the 24 fellows sink into themselves as I absorbed the young man's verbal blows without setting an example for both giving and insisting on respect.

  It took months for me to understand that my biggest error had been trying to defend an implausible position. In a way, the young man was right -I was privileged. I'd been to some of the best schools on the planet and was raised by a loving family, and my white skin offered me significant access. The question wasn't whether I was privileged, but whether that privilege disqualified me from effectively running the program. I had responded to the wrong attack-and had done so lamely, at that.

  Instead, I should have asked the young man why he chose to stay in a program when he disdained its host, the Rockefeller Foundation. He sounded like a trust-fund kid who spends the day badmouthing his parents while eagerly accepting their money. Indeed, the affiliation with Rockefeller provided him not only with instant credibility, but also gave him networks and contacts that afforded him significant access. In not confronting him, I let down the program and myself.

  Though I was no longer the young woman staring at two champagne bottles and wondering what to do in the face of inequity, this question of navigating privilege in its many manifestations would continue to present increasingly nuanced questions. I'd learned that individuals gain privilege by their upbringing, beauty, athletic ability, or education, not simply from where they come or to whom they are born. My first-grade nun had instructed me that from those to whom much is given, much is expected. I was learning that this lesson had to be combined with Shakespeare's wisdom that one must "to thine own self be true." Add to this humility, empathy, a sense of curiosity, courage, and plain old hard work, and I was finally seeing the real path to leadership. Of course, humor is always a plus.

  Among the Rockefeller program's fellows, I met several remarkable leaders, young and old, including a woman named Ingrid Washinawatok, a member of the Menominee Nation of Wisconsin, the wife of a Palestinian, and a voice for indigenous peoples across the world. Strong in body and spirit, Ingrid had a round, wide face, wore jeans most of the time, and loved sharing Native American legends and the philosophies of great Indian chiefs. We started a yearlong conversation about the role of the marketplace for tribal peoples who feel so far behind the economic mainstream.

  I could listen to Ingrid tell stories for hours, but we never got to finish our conversation. While our second group was preparing to go to South Africa, Ingrid was working with the U'wa community in Colombia along with two colleagues-Lahe'ena'e Gay of Hawaii and environmentalist Terence Freitas. The three were helping an indigenous community threatened by US oil companies start a school system. On their way to the airport to leave, their car was stopped by rebels, and all three were tortured and murdered.

  I thought of being jumped in Tanzania, about how Ingrid also must have been thinking it was a perfect day the moment before it suddenly wasn't. I thought about the adolescent boys of the rebel group who had no idea who she was or what she represented. The Next Generation Leadership group was in South Africa when we heard the news. A few days later, we met with Archbishop Desmond Tutu to discuss the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

  He told us, "We are all children of God. You must remember that people want to be good, even if sometimes they are not. Ingrid's spirit lives inside of you now, and you must carry on her work. That is life and that is love." From then on, we would leave an empty chair when we met as a group to honor the memory of our greatly admired friend.

  Hearing Bishop Tutu's words and thinking about Ingrid and the work of other leaders I'd known reaffirmed my own commitment to finding that place of common humanity. But NGL
had taught me that just bringing diverse people together is not enough to foster productive dialogue. More powerful is enabling groups of people to work on a common venture, a common problem. And increasingly, the problems in the world are shared. Here was a Native American woman killed by Colombian rebels for doing work with an indigenous group that had been marginalized by an international oil company. Her life and death gave me a legacy to uphold, one of recognizing that all people, rich and poor, from all nations, religions, and backgrounds, are our sisters and brothers. From this place, everything else must flow.

  Of all the people I miss from that era, Lisa Sullivan stands out. During the early days of building the Next Generation Leadership program, Lisa and I decided to take a trip to the Mississippi Delta, for we would later be taking the fellows there. We hardly knew one another then, and Lisa had let me know she wasn't sure about having me as a traveling partner in the real American South, a place she considered to be the home of her people, but I promised to behave myself. I arrived at the Jackson Airport on a cool fall day in a pleated skirt and heels. She wore jeans, sneakers, and a baseball cap. Perfect.

  For a week, Lisa and I visited educators and church leaders, policymakers, prisoners, and businessmen. I showed my surprise at finding that 95 percent of public schools were black, while 95 percent of private schools were white-and my lack of awareness angered Lisa. I found her ideas on business to be knee-jerk liberalism and told her so. It took the extraordinary Unita Blackwell, the first black woman mayor in Mississippi (but unrelated to Angela), to remind us of how much we needed one another. Lisa could organize people like no one I'd known, and I knew how to build organizations. We shared a woridview, one in which all people had a chance to fulfill their highest purpose.

  "Leading," Mayor Blackwell told us, "is a lifelong proposition-and the people who seem least like you are usually the people you need most."