Jeg vil begynde en historie, a la Seth Godin, fra da jeg var 12 år gammel. Min onkel Ed gav mig en smuk blå sweater -- jeg synes i det mindste den var smuk. Og den havde lodne zebraer gående langs maven, og bjergene Kilimanjaro og Meru var på en måde på tværs af brystet, det var også loddent. Og jeg havde den på når som helst, og jeg synes det var den mest fantastiske ting jeg ejede.
I want to start with a story, a la Seth Godin, from when I was 12 years old. My uncle Ed gave me a beautiful blue sweater -- at least I thought it was beautiful. And it had fuzzy zebras walking across the stomach, and Mount Kilimanjaro and Mount Meru were kind of right across the chest, that were also fuzzy. And I wore it whenever I could, thinking it was the most fabulous thing I owned.
Indtil en dag i niende klasse, hvor jeg stod med nogle amr. fodboldspillere. Og min krop havde tydeligvis forandret sig, og Matt Mussolina, som unægteligt var min nemesis i gymnasiet, sagde med en rungende stemme, at vi ikke længere behøvede at tage langt væk for at komme på skiferie, men i stedet kunne vi stå på ski på Bjerg Novogratz. (Latter) Jeg var så ydmyget og krænket, at jeg med det samme løb hjem til min mor og skældte hende ud for at lade mig bære mig den hæslige sweater. Vi kørte af sted og gav sweateren til velgørenhed. nærmest højtideligt, min tanke var, at jeg aldrig mere skulle tænke på den sweater, eller heller se den igen.
Until one day in ninth grade, when I was standing with a number of the football players. And my body had clearly changed, and Matt, who was undeniably my nemesis in high school, said in a booming voice that we no longer had to go far away to go on ski trips, but we could all ski on Mount Novogratz. (Laughter) And I was so humiliated and mortified that I immediately ran home to my mother and chastised her for ever letting me wear the hideous sweater. We drove to the Goodwill and we threw the sweater away somewhat ceremoniously, my idea being that I would never have to think about the sweater nor see it ever again.
Spol frem i tiden -- 11 år senere, jeg er 25 år gammel. Jeg arbejder i Kigali, Rwanda, joggende gennem de stejle skråninger, da ser jeg, 3 meter foran mig, en lille dreng -- 11 år gammel -- løbende imod mig, iklædt min sweater. Og jeg tænker, nej, det er ikke muligt. Men så, nysgerrig, løber jeg op til barnet, skræmte selvfølgelig livet af ham, greb ham i kraven, vendte den op, og der var mit navn skrevet i kraven på den her sweater.
Fast forward -- 11 years later, I'm a 25-year-old kid. I'm working in Kigali, Rwanda, jogging through the steep slopes, when I see, 10 feet in front of me, a little boy -- 11 years old -- running toward me, wearing my sweater. And I'm thinking, no, this is not possible. But so, curious, I run up to the child -- of course scaring the living bejesus out of him -- grab him by the collar, turn it over, and there is my name written on the collar of this sweater.
Jeg fortæller den historie, fordi den har tjent og bliver ved med at tjene som en metafor for den grad af forbundethed som vi har her på Jorden. Ofte indser vi ikke hvad vores handlinger eller ikke-handlinger gør ved folk, som vi tror, vi aldrig kommer til at se eller kende. Jeg fortæller den også fordi den fortæller en større sammenhængende historie om hvad nødhjælp er og kan være. At den rejste fra velgørenheden i Virginia, og bevægede sig af sted i den store industri, hvilket dengang gav millioner tons brugt tøj til Afrika og Asien. Hvilket var en meget god ting, som skaffede billigt tøj. Og på samme tid, især i Rwanda, ødelagde det den lokale detailhandel. Ikke for at sige, at det ikke burde have gjort det, men vi er nødt til at blive bedre til at besvare de spørgsmål, der skal overvejes, når vi tænker på konsekvenserne og reaktionerne.
I tell that story, because it has served and continues to serve as a metaphor to me about the level of connectedness that we all have on this Earth. We so often don't realize what our action and our inaction does to people we think we will never see and never know. I also tell it because it tells a larger contextual story of what aid is and can be. That this traveled into the Goodwill in Virginia, and moved its way into the larger industry, which at that point was giving millions of tons of secondhand clothing to Africa and Asia. Which was a very good thing, providing low cost clothing. And at the same time, certainly in Rwanda, it destroyed the local retailing industry. Not to say that it shouldn't have, but that we have to get better at answering the questions that need to be considered when we think about consequences and responses.
Jeg bliver ved Rwanda, omkring 1985, 1986, hvor jeg lavede to ting. Jeg havde startet et bageri med 20 ugifte mødre. Vi blev kaldt De-Dårlige-Nyheder-Bjørne, og vores idé var at vi ville styre snack branchen i Kigali, hvilket ikke var svært, fordi der ikke var nogen snacks før os. Og fordi vi havde en god forretningsmodel, lykkedes det faktisk, og jeg så kvinderne forandre sig på et mikro niveau. Men på samme tid, startede jeg en mikro-finans bank, og i morgen vil Iqbal Quadir snakke om Grameen, som er er bedstefaderen til alle mikro-finans banker, hvilket nu er en verdensomspændende bevægelse -- man snakker om et meme -- men det var ret nyt dengang, specielt i en økonomi, der var på vej fra byttehandel til pengehandel.
So, I'm going to stick in Rwanda, circa 1985, 1986, where I was doing two things. I had started a bakery with 20 unwed mothers. We were called the "Bad News Bears," and our notion was we were going to corner the snack food business in Kigali, which was not hard because there were no snacks before us. And because we had a good business model, we actually did it, and I watched these women transform on a micro-level. But at the same time, I started a micro-finance bank, and tomorrow Iqbal Quadir is going to talk about Grameen, which is the grandfather of all micro-finance banks, which now is a worldwide movement -- you talk about a meme -- but then it was quite new, especially in an economy that was moving from barter into trade.
Vi gjorde en masse ting rigtigt. Vi fokuserede på en forretningsmodel, vi insisterede på at være selvbestaltede. Kvinderne besluttede i sidste ende selv, hvordan de kunne bruge denne adgang til kredit, til at opbygge deres lille forretning, få en højere indkomst, så de kunne forsørge deres familier bedre.
We got a lot of things right. We focused on a business model; we insisted on skin in the game. The women made their own decisions at the end of the day as to how they would use this access to credit to build their little businesses, earn more income so they could take care of their families better.
Hvad vi ikke forstod, var, hvad der skete rundt omkring os, med sammenfaldet af frygt, etnisk strid og bestemt et nødhjælps spil, om du vil, der spillede ind på den her usynlige, men meget håndgribelige bevægelse i Rwanda, På det tidspunkt var 30 procent af budgettet ulandshjælp. Folkedrabet skete i 1994, syv år efter at disse kvinder alle arbejdede sammen om at bygge denne drøm. Og de gode nyheder var at institutionen, bank institutionen, overlevede. Faktisk blev det den største rehabiliterings udlåner i landet. Bageriet blev udslettet, men lektionerne for mig var, at ansvarlighed betaler sig -- jeg fik muligheden for skabe ting med folk fra bunden, ved at bruge forretningsmodeller, hvor - som Steven Levitt ville sige det - incitamenterne betyder en hel del. Forstå, ligegyldig hvor komplekse vi end måtte være, incitamenter betyder noget.
What we didn't understand, what was happening all around us, with the confluence of fear, ethnic strife and certainly an aid game, if you will, that was playing into this invisible but certainly palpable movement inside Rwanda, that at that time, 30 percent of the budget was all foreign aid. The genocide happened in 1994, seven years after these women all worked together to build this dream. And the good news was that the institution, the banking institution, lasted. In fact, it became the largest rehabilitation lender in the country. The bakery was completely wiped out, but the lessons for me were that accountability counts -- got to build things with people on the ground, using business models where, as Steven Levitt would say, the incentives matter. Understand, however complex we may be, incentives matter.
Så, når Chris fortalte mig hvor vidunderligt alt der skete i verden, at vi oplevede et skift i tidsånd, på den ene side jeg er totalt enig med ham, og jeg var så begejstret for at se, hvad der skete med G8 -- at verden, på grund af folk som Tony Blair og Bono og Bob Geldof -- snakker verden om global fattigdom, verden snakker om Afrika, på måder jeg aldrig har set før i mit liv. Det er betagende. Og på samme tid, hvad der holder mig vågen er frygten for, at vi ser på sejrene af G8 -- 50 milliarder dollars øget nødhjælp i Afrika, 40 milliarder dollars i reduceret gæld -- som sejren, som mere end kapitel 1, som vores moralske syndsforladelse.
So when Chris raised to me how wonderful everything that was happening in the world, that we were seeing a shift in zeitgeist, on the one hand I absolutely agree with him, and I was so thrilled to see what happened with the G8 -- that the world, because of people like Tony Blair and Bono and Bob Geldof -- the world is talking about global poverty; the world is talking about Africa in ways I have never seen in my life. It's thrilling. And at the same time, what keeps me up at night is a fear that we'll look at the victories of the G8 -- 50 billion dollars in increased aid to Africa, 40 billion in reduced debt -- as the victory, as more than chapter one, as our moral absolution.
I virkeligheden bør vi at se det som kapitel et, fejre der, lukke det, og indse at vi behøver et kapitel to, det handler alt sammen om at få ting gjort -- alt sammen om hvordan. Og hvis du husker en ting fra hvad jeg ville tale om i dag, er det, at den eneste måde at ende fattigdom, at gøre det til historie, er at bygge bæredygtige systemer fra bunden der giver kritiske og billige varer og ydelser til de fattige, på måder, der er finansielt bæredygtige og skalerbare. Hvis vi gør det, kan vi virkelig gøre fattigdom til historie.
And in fact, what we need to do is see that as chapter one, celebrate it, close it, and recognize that we need a chapter two that is all about execution, all about the how-to. And if you remember one thing from what I want to talk about today, it's that the only way to end poverty, to make it history, is to build viable systems on the ground that deliver critical and affordable goods and services to the poor, in ways that are financially sustainable and scaleable. If we do that, we really can make poverty history.
Og det var den -- den helhedsfilosofi -- der opmuntrede mig til at starte min nuværende bestræbelse kaldet Acumen Fond, som prøver at bygge nogle mini planer for hvordan vi kan gøre dette med vand, helbred og boliger i Pakitstan, Indien, Kenya, Tanzania og Egypten. Og jeg vil snakke en lille smule om det, og ok nogle eksempler så du kan se, hvad det er vi laver. Men før jeg gør dette -- og det er en anden af mine yndlings ærgrelser -- Jeg vil snakke en smule om hvor fattige folk er. Fordi vi alt for ofte snakker om dem som de her stærke, enorme masser af mennesker der ønsker at blive frie, når det faktisk er en ret utrolig historie. På makro niveau, fire milliarder mennesker på Jorden tjener mindre end 4 dollars om dagen
And it was that -- that whole philosophy -- that encouraged me to start my current endeavor called "Acumen Fund," which is trying to build some mini-blueprints for how we might do that in water, health and housing in Pakistan, India, Kenya, Tanzania and Egypt. And I want to talk a little bit about that, and some of the examples, so you can see what it is that we're doing. But before I do this -- and this is another one of my pet peeves -- I want to talk a little bit about who the poor are. Because we too often talk about them as these strong, huge masses of people yearning to be free, when in fact, it's quite an amazing story. On a macro level, four billion people on Earth make less than four dollars a day.
Det er dem vi snakker om, når vi snakker om de fattige. Hvis du opsummere det, er det den tredje største økonomi på Jorden, og alligevel er de fleste af disse mennesker usynlige. Hvor vi typisk arbejder, er der folk der tjener mellem en og tre dollars om dagen. Hvem er disse mennesker? De er landmænd og fabriksarbejdere. De arbejder i regeringskontorer. De er chauffører. De er lokale beboere. De betaler typisk for nødvendige varer og ydelse som vand, såsom sundhed og beboelse, og de betaler 30 til 40 gange hvad deres middelklasse modparter betaler -- især hvor vi arbejder i Karachi og Nairobi. De fattige vil også gerne tage, og tager, kloge beslutninger, hvis du giver dem muligheden.
That's who we talk about when we think about "the poor." If you aggregate it, it's the third largest economy on Earth, and yet most of these people go invisible. Where we typically work, there's people making between one and three dollars a day. Who are these people? They are farmers and factory workers. They work in government offices. They're drivers. They are domestics. They typically pay for critical goods and services like water, like healthcare, like housing, and they pay 30 to 40 times what their middleclass counterparts pay -- certainly where we work in Karachi and Nairobi. The poor also are willing to make, and do make, smart decisions, if you give them that opportunity.
Så, to eksempler. Et er i Indien, hvor der er 240 millioner landmænd, hvor de fleste tjener mindre end to dollars om dagen. Hvor vi arbejder i Aurangabad, er jorden ekstraodinært udtørret. Du ser folk som i gennemsnit tjener 60 cents til en dollar. Denne fyr i pink er en social entreprenør ved navn Ami Tabar. Det han gjorde var, at se hvad der skete i Israel, og finde ud af hvordan man laver dryp-vanding, som er en måde at lede vand direkte til planterne. Men tidligere er det kun blevet gjort på større gårde, så Ami Tabar tog det og skalerede det ned til en ottendedel af en hektar. Et par principper -- Byg småt. Gør det uendeligt udvideligt og betalbar for fattige.
So, two examples. One is in India, where there are 240 million farmers, most of whom make less than two dollars a day. Where we work in Aurangabad, the land is extraordinarily parched. You see people on average making 60 cents to a dollar. This guy in pink is a social entrepreneur named Ami Tabar. What he did was see what was happening in Israel, larger approaches, and figure out how to do a drip irrigation, which is a way of bringing water directly to the plant stock. But previously it's only been created for large-scale farms, so Ami Tabar took this and modularized it down to an eighth of an acre. A couple of principles: build small. Make it infinitely expandable and affordable to the poor.
Denne familie, Sarita og hendes mand, købte en 15 dollar enhed, da de boede i et -- bogstavelig talt et tre-vægs udhus med et tag af bølgeblik. Efter een høst, havde de øget deres indkomst nok til at købe endnu et system til hele deres kvarte hektar. Et par år senere, mødte jeg dem. De laver nu fire dollars om dagen, hvilket er ret meget for mellemklassen i Indien, og de viste mig det betonfundamentet, de lige havde lagt til at bygge deres hus på. Og jeg sværger, at du kunne se fremtiden i kvindens øjne. Noget jeg virkelig tror på.
This family, Sarita and her husband, bought a 15-dollar unit when they were living in a -- literally a three-walled lean-to with a corrugated iron roof. After one harvest, they had increased their income enough to buy a second system to do their full quarter-acre. A couple of years later, I meet them. They now make four dollars a day, which is pretty much middle class for India, and they showed me the concrete foundation they had just laid to build their house. And I swear, you could see the future in that woman's eyes. Something I truly believe.
Du kan ikke snakke om fattigdom i dag uden at snakke om malaria-sengenet, og igen giver jeg Jeffrey Sachs fra Harvard kæmpe ros, for at bringe dette til verden, denne måde han raser -- for fem dollars kan du redde et liv. Malaria er en sygdom, der dræber en til tre millioner mennesker om året. 300 til 500 millioner tilfælde er rapporteret. Det er estimeret, at Afrika taber omkring 13 milliarder dollar om året til sygdommen. Fem dollar kan redde et liv. Vi kan sende folk til månen, vi kan se om der er liv på Mars -- hvorfor kan vi ikke give fem-dollar net til 500 millioner mennesker?
You can't talk about poverty today without talking about malaria bed nets, and I again give Jeffrey Sachs of Harvard huge kudos for bringing to the world this notion of his rage -- for five dollars you can save a life. Malaria is a disease that kills one to three million people a year. 300 to 500 million cases are reported. It's estimated that Africa loses about 13 billion dollars a year to the disease. Five dollars can save a life. We can send people to the moon; we can see if there's life on Mars -- why can't we get five-dollar nets to 500 million people?
Spørgsmålet er dog ikke, hvorfor kan vi ikke, spørgsmålet er, hvordan kan vi hjælpe Afrika med at gøre det for dem selv? Mange forhindringer. Et: produktionen er for lav. To: prisen er for høj. Tre: dette er god vej ind -- tæt på hvor vores fabrik er lokaliseret. Distribution er et mareridt, men ikke umuligt. Vi startede med at få et 350.000 dollar lån til den største traditionelle sengenet fabrikant i Afrika, så de kunne overføre teknologi fra Japan og lave disse langtidsholdbare, fem-års net. Her er nogle billeder af fabrikken.
The question, though, is not "Why can't we?" The question is how can we help Africans do this for themselves? A lot of hurdles. One: production is too low. Two: price is too high. Three: this is a good road in -- right near where our factory is located. Distribution is a nightmare, but not impossible. We started by making a 350,000-dollar loan to the largest traditional bed net manufacturer in Africa so that they could transfer technology from Japan and build these long-lasting, five-year nets. Here are just some pictures of the factory.
I dag, tre år senere, har firmaet ansat tusind kvinder mere. Den bidrager med omkring 600.000 dollars i løn til økonomien i Tanzania. Det er den største virksomhed i Tanzania. Gennemstrømningsraten er lige nu 1,5 millioner net, tre millioner ved årets slutning. Vi håber at have syv millioner ved næste års slutning. Så produktions-siden virker. På distributions siden, har vi dog meget arbejde at lave. Lige nu, bliver 95 procent af disse net købt af FN, og så uddelt primært til folk i Afrika. Vi bygger på nogle af de mest værdifulde ressourcer i Afrika -- mennesker. Deres kvinder.
Today, three years later, the company has employed another thousand women. It contributes about 600,000 dollars in wages to the economy of Tanzania. It's the largest company in Tanzania. The throughput rate right now is 1.5 million nets, three million by the end of the year. We hope to have seven million at the end of next year. So the production side is working. On the distribution side, though, as a world, we have a lot of work to do. Right now, 95 percent of these nets are being bought by the U.N., and then given primarily to people around Africa. We're looking at building on some of the most precious resources of Africa: people. Their women.
Og nu vil jeg have jer til at møde Jacqueline, min navnesøster, 21 år gammel. Hvis hun var født alle andre steder end i Tanzania, så kunne hun styre Wall Street. Hun kører to af de linier, og har allerede opsparet nok penge til udbetalingen til hendes hus. Hun tjener omkring to dollars om dagen, opbygger et uddannelsesfond, og har fortalt mig, at hun ikke gifter sig eller får børn før det er gennemført. Og så, da jeg fortalte hende om vores idé -- at vi måske kunne tage Tupperware modellen fra USA, og finde en måde for kvinderne selv at gå ud og sælge disse net til andre -- regnede hun hurtigt ud hvad hun selv kunne tjene og skrev sig op.
And so I want you to meet Jacqueline, my namesake, 21 years old. If she were born anywhere else but Tanzania, I'm telling you, she could run Wall Street. She runs two of the lines, and has already saved enough money to put a down payment on her house. She makes about two dollars a day, is creating an education fund, and told me she is not marrying nor having children until these things are completed. And so, when I told her about our idea -- that maybe we could take a Tupperware model from the United States, and find a way for the women themselves to go out and sell these nets to others -- she quickly started calculating what she herself could make and signed up.
Vi lærte en lektie fra IDEO, et af vores favorit firmaer, og hurtigt lavede vi en prototype baseret på dette, og tog Jaqueline ind til området, hvor hun bor. Hun samlede 10 af de kvinder som hun snakker med for at se om hun kunne sælge de her net, fem dollar stykket, på trods af det faktum, at folk sagde, at ingen ville købe noget, og vi lærte en masse om hvordan man sælger ting. Uden at komme ind med vores egne forestillinger, fordi hun snakkede ikke om malaria før til allersidst. Først, snakkede hun om komfort, status, smukhed. Disse net, sagde hun, du putter dem på gulvet, insekterne forlader dit hus. Børn kan sove natten igennem, husene ser godt ud, når man hænger dem i vinduet. Og vi er begyndt med at lave gardiner, og det er ikke kun smukt, men folk kan se status -- at du tager dig af dine børn. Først da, snakkede hun om at redde deres børns liv. Der skal læres mange lektier om hvordan vi sælger varer og ydelser til fattige.
We took a lesson from IDEO, one of our favorite companies, and quickly did a prototyping on this, and took Jacqueline into the area where she lives. She brought 10 of the women with whom she interacts together to see if she could sell these nets, five dollars apiece, despite the fact that people say nobody will buy one, and we learned a lot about how you sell things. Not coming in with our own notions, because she didn't even talk about malaria until the very end. First, she talked about comfort, status, beauty. These nets, she said, you put them on the floor, bugs leave your house. Children can sleep through the night; the house looks beautiful; you hang them in the window. And we've started making curtains, and not only is it beautiful, but people can see status -- that you care about your children. Only then did she talk about saving your children's lives. A lot of lessons to be learned in terms of how we sell goods and services to the poor.
Jeg vil slutte af med bare at sige, at der er en enorm mulighed for at gøre fattigdom til historie. For at gøre det rigtigt, skal vi at lave forretningsmodeller der betyder noget, der er skalérbare og som virker med afrikanere, indere, folk i hele den udviklende verden, som passer i denne kategori, få dem til at gøre det selv. Fordi, i sidste ende, handler det om engagement. Det handler om at forstå, at folk ikke vil have almisser, de vil tage deres egne beslutninger, de vil løse deres egne problemer, og at det er ved at engagere sig med dem, at vi ikke bare skaber meget mere værdighed for dem, men også for os selv. Og derfor opfordrer jeg jer alle til næste gang at tænke på hvordan I engagerer jer med denne opfattelse og denne mulighed som vi alle har -- at gøre fattigdom til historie -- ved virkelig at blive en del af processen og bevæge os væk fra en os-og-dem verden, og indse at det er om os allesammen, og den verden som vi, sammen, vil leve i og dele. Mange Tak. (Bifald)
I want to end just by saying that there's enormous opportunity to make poverty history. To do it right, we have to build business models that matter, that are scaleable and that work with Africans, Indians, people all over the developing world who fit in this category, to do it themselves. Because at the end of the day, it's about engagement. It's about understanding that people really don't want handouts, that they want to make their own decisions; they want to solve their own problems; and that by engaging with them, not only do we create much more dignity for them, but for us as well. And so I urge all of you to think next time as to how to engage with this notion and this opportunity that we all have -- to make poverty history -- by really becoming part of the process and moving away from an us-and-them world, and realizing that it's about all of us, and the kind of world that we, together, want to live in and share. Thank you. (Applause)