The Blue Sweater: Textbook Social Leadership

“If you don’t like the way the world is, you change it. You have an obligation to change it. You just do it one step at a time.” -Marian Wright Edelman

I just finished reading The Blue Sweater: Bridging the Gap Between Rich and Poor in an Interconnected World by Jacqueline Novogratz. It was an inspiring and overwhelming experience.

Jacqueline is the “founder and CEO of Acumen Fund, a nonprofit venture capital firm for the poor that invests in sustainable enterprises bringing healthcare, safe water, alternative energy, and housing to low-income people in the developing world.”

More than anything, I was stunned at how precisely we described Jacqueline’s life and impact in Social Leadership: A Fresh Vision for Old Problems. Page after page, I discovered vivid elements of our S.O.C.I.A.L. acronym in Jacqueline’s experiences, mindset, and accomplishments.

Consider the following excerpts:

Submission

“When I told Sister Theophane I wanted to be a nun,” [she said], ‘Regardless of what you become, remember always that to whom much is given much is expected. God gave you many gifts and it is important that you use them for others as best you can.’”

Oneness

“Though the average citizen cannot, of course, match the enormous gifts made by successful entrepreneurs such as Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, each of us in his or her own way can contribute something by thinking — and acting — like a true global citizen. We have only one world for all of us on earth, and the future really is ours to create, in a world we dare to imagine together.”

“People need to feel responsible to one another. Otherwise, we will breed successful individuals who don’t feel connected enough to the greater society.”

“People need to believe that they can participate fully in the decisions that affect their lives and have a stake in societies in which they live.”

The title of the book speaks of an astounding experience that taught Jacqueline the principle of oneness, but I’ll let you discover that for yourself…

Calling

“I…knew instinctively that a combination of service and adventure could lead to a life of passion and constant renewal.”

“…I believed an important way to solve povety was to link grassroots organizations to the resources and skills of mainstream corporations. I wanted to be a bridge…an instrument of peace wrapped in a love of financial statements, of telling stories through numbers, of trying to build companies through strategic financing and management support.”

Integral Education

“As I was about to graduate [from the University of Virginia], I remember feeling a deep sense of pride in knowing that I would forever have the tools to support myself, no matter what happened in life.”

“At the Philanthropy Workshop…we read and discussed Aristotle and Socrates, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Gandhi.”

“Each year, we select approximately 10 extraordinary young people…they spend days reading and discussing literature and poetry — Aristotle and Martin Luther King, Jr., Gandhi, Aung San Suu Kyi, and Nelson Mandela, among others — to help them begin to hone and then ground their own philosophies for change in the pragmatic realities of the work we do.”

Action

“But where to start? Like so many young people with skills today, my desire to contribute to changing the world…wasn’t matched by a proper game plan: I had no idea how to do it…So I did what I now tell young people to do: I started where I could and where I was given a chance.”

“…I realized I had no choice but to do the only thing I knew how to do well — I would just work. And then work some more. And try to pay attention to whatever the work was teaching me.”

“But empathy is only our starting point. It must be combined with focus and conviction, the toughness to know what needs to get done and the courage to follow through.”

Liberty

“…freedom is not just about political liberty, but also about economic independence and the power of choice. The women in the slums were operating under dependency, not freedom. If the donor community couldn’t help these women liberate themselves, they needed to get out of the way.”

“If the women had been given a chance to borrow for a project they believed would generate income, they would have focused more seriously on the work. A market mechanism would have provided a better feedback loop for both women and donors. Instead, the system festered under low expectations and mediocre results.”

“I’ve learned that solutions to poverty must be driven by discipline, accountability, and market strength, not easy sentimentality. I’ve learned that many of the answers to poverty lie in the space between the market and charity and that what is needed most of all is moral leadership willing to build solutions from the perspectives of the poor people rather than imposing grand theories and plans upon them.”

The Blue Sweater is a must-read for any aspiring social leader. Buy it, read it, and learn from a textbook case of social leadership how to change the world.

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Stephen Palmer is a book writer for mission-driven leaders, a small business lead generation website design architect and persuasive website copywriter, a co-founder of The Center for Social Leadership, and the author of Uncommon Sense: A Common Citizen’s Guide to Rebuilding America.

He co-authored the New York Times bestseller Killing Sacred Cows: Overcoming the Financial Myths that are Destroying Your Prosperity, as well as Hub Mentality: Shifting from Business Transactions to Community Interaction.

He is a liberal-arts graduate of George Wythe University and a graduate and faculty member of the “non-traditional business school” Wizard Academy.

Stephen resides in Round Rock, Texas with his gorgeous wife Karina, awesome son Alex, and princess daughters Libby, Avery, and Laela.

Subscribe to Stephen’s blog and contact him at stephen [at] leadershipwriter [dot] com.