The Blue Sweater: Bridging the Gap Between Rich and Poor in an Interconnected World
Search in google:
Jacqueline Novogratz left a career in international banking to spend her life on a quest to understand global poverty and find powerful new ways of tackling it. From her first stumbling efforts as a young idealist venturing forth in Africa to the creation of the trailblazing organization she runs today, Novogratz tells gripping stories with unforgettable characters. She show, in ways both hilarious and heartbreaking, how traditional charity often fails, but how a new form of philanthropic investing called "patient capital" can help make people self-sufficient and can change millions of lives. More than just an autobiography or a how-to guide to addressing poverty, The Blue Sweater is a call to action that challenges us to grant dignity to the poor and to rethink our engagement with the world. Publishers Weekly Novogratz combined her twin passions for banking and philanthropy after she left a lucrative corporate banking position to work with women's groups in microfinance, the pioneering banking strategy that won Muhammad Yunus a Nobel Peace Prize in 2006. Her work merging market systems with development and social empowerment led her to create the Acumen Fund for entrepreneurs in developing nations, which she describes as "the opposite of old-fashioned charity." Novogratz also focuses on her own developmental path as she charts her evolving views of capitalism and how she will "change the world." Unfortunately, she stumbles when she strays into biographical territory, relying on clichés to bolster her professional decisions through a personal lens. The book is most interesting when it touches on the difficult decisions that Novogratz and her team must make about financial empowerment-should they charge interest on loans to poor women? can working women find acceptance in a patriarchal society?-but these dilemmas are facilely glossed, keeping the book in an uncomfortable limbo between a personal narrative and a primer on globalization. (Feb.)Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
1 Innocent Abroad 12 A Bird on the Outside, a Tiger Within 183 Context Matters 324 Basket Economics and Political Realities 485 The Blue Bakery 646 Dancing in the Dark 797 Traveling without a Road Map 948 A New Learning Curve 1129 Blue Paint on the Road 13010 Retribution and Resurrection 14711 The Cost of Silence 16112 Institutions Matter 17613 The Education of a Patient Capitalist 18914 Building Brick by Brick 20915 Taking It to Scale 22816 The World We Dream, the Future We Create Together 243Acknowledgments 255Index 258
