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.
Želim početi s pričom u stilu Setha Godina, iz vremena kad sam imala 12 godina. Moj ujak Ed dao mi je prekrasan plavi džemper – bar sam ja mislila da je prekrasan. Imao je čupave zebre koje su hodale preko trbuha, a planine Kilimanjaro i Meru bile su preko prsa, također čupave. Nosila sam ga kad god sam mogla, misleći da je to nešto najnevjerojatnije što sam posjedovala.
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.
Sve do jednog dana u 1. razredu srednje škole, kad sam stajala s nekoliko nogometaša. Moje se tijelo očito promijenilo, a Matt Mussolina, koji je nedvojbeno bio moj neprijatelj u srednjoj školi, izderao se da više ne moramo ići nekamo daleko na skijanje, nego svi možemo skijati na planini Novogratz. (Smijeh) Bila sam tako ponižena i osramoćena da sam odmah pobjegla kući majci i izgrdila je zato što mi je dopustila da uopće nosim taj grozni džemper. Odvezle smo se u Crveni križ i pomalo ceremonijalno ostavile džemper ondje, i ja sam mislila da više nikad neću morati misliti na njega niti ga ikad više vidjeti.
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.
Premotajmo naprijed – 11 godina kasnije, imam 25 godina. Radim u Kigaliju, u Ruandi, trčim strmim padinama, kad ugledam, 3 metra ispred sebe, malog dječaka – jedanaestogodišnjaka – kako trči prema meni, u mojem džemperu. A ja mislim, ne, to nije moguće. Ipak, znatiželjna, otrčim do djeteta i – naravno, nasmrt ga preplašivši – zgrabim ga za ovratnik, pogledam unutra i vidim svoje ime, napisano na ovratniku tog džempera.
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.
Pričam ovu priču jer je meni poslužila, a i dalje služi kao metafora o stupnju povezanosti koji svi mi imamo na ovoj Zemlji. Toliko često ne shvaćamo kako naše djelovanje i pasivnost utječu na ljude za koje mislimo da ih nikad nećemo vidjeti ni upoznati. Također je pričam jer je to dio veće kontekstualne priče o tome što humanitarna pomoć jest i može biti. O tome kako je džemper došao u Crveni križ u Virginiji, i našao se dalje, u većoj industriji, koja je tada slala milijune tona rabljene odjeće u Afriku i Aziju. Što je bila vrlo dobra stvar, dobavljanje jeftine odjeće. U isto vrijeme, a Ruandi sigurno, to je uništilo lokalnu maloprodajnu industriju. Ne želim reći da to nisu trebali učiniti, nego da moramo naći bolje odgovore na pitanja koja moramo imati na umu kad razmišljamo o posljedicama i reakcijama.
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.
Dakle, držat ću se Ruande, oko 1985., 1986. godine, gdje sam radila dvije stvari. Otvorila sam pekarnicu s 20 neudanih majki. Zvali smo se «Bad News Bears» (Medvjedi s lošim vijestima), i naša je ideja bila kontrolirati posao zalogajnicama u Kigaliju, što nije bilo teško jer toga nije bilo prije nas. Budući da smo imali dobar model poslovanja, zaista smo uspjeli. Gledala sam kako se te žene preobražavaju na mikrorazini. U isto vrijeme, osnovala sam mikrofinancijsku banku, a sutra će Iqbal Quadir govoriti o Grameenu, djedu svih mikrofinancijskih banaka, što je sada svjetski pokret – pričamo o memi -- ali tad je to bilo prilično novo, pogotovo u gospodarstvu koje se pretvaralo iz trampe u trgovinu.
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.
Dosta smo toga dobro napravili. Fokusirali smo se na poslovni model; inzistirali smo na tome da svi ulože novac u posao. Žene su na kraju dana same odlučivale kako će iskoristiti ovaj pristup kreditu kako bi izgradile svoje male obrte i više zaradile kako bi mogle bolje brinuti za svoje obitelji.
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.
Ono što nismo razumjeli, a što se događalo oko nas, uz kombinaciju straha, etničkih sukoba i humanitarne pomoći, da tako kažem, koja se pretvarala u nevidljiv, ali svakako opipljiv pokret u Ruandi, jest da je tada 30% sredstava bila pomoć iz inozemstva. Genocid se dogodio 1994. godine, sedam godina nakon što su te žene zajedno radile da bi ostvarile svoj san. Dobra je vijest da je institucija, bankarska institucija, preživjela. Zapravo, postala je najveći zajmodavac za oporavak u državi. Pekarnica je bila posve uništena, ali naučila sam da se odgovornost cijeni – morate graditi s lokalnim ljudima i primijeniti poslovne modele u kojima su, kako bi Steven Levitt rekao, namjere bitne. Shvatite da, koliko god da smo složeni, namjere su bitne.
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.
Stoga, kad mi je Chris pokazao kako je predivno sve što se događalo u svijetu, da smo gledali kako se mijenja duh vremena, u jednu se ruku potpuno slažem s njim, i bila sam tako oduševljena onime što se događalo u G8 – da svijet, zbog ljudi kao što su Tony Blair i Bono i Bob Geldof – svijet razgovara o globalnom siromaštvu, svijet razgovara o Africi na načine koje nikad u životu nisam vidjela. Uzbudljivo je. A istovremeno, ono zbog čega noćima ne spavam jest strah da ćemo pobjede G8 – 50 milijardi dolara povećane pomoći Africi, 40 milijardi u smanjenju dugova – vidjeti kao pobjedu, kao prvo poglavlje, kao svoje moralno odrješenje.
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.
A zapravo, to upravo i trebamo vidjeti to kao prvo poglavlje, proslaviti ga, zatvoriti i shvatiti da trebamo drugo poglavlje koje se odnosi samo na izvršenje, na način izvršenja. Ako ćete zapamtiti samo jednu stvar od onoga o čemu želim danas govoriti, neka to bude da je jedini način kako zaustaviti siromaštvo taj da ono postane stvar povijesti, da izgredimo održive sustave koji će osiguravati potrebna i jeftina dobra i usluge siromašnima, na financijski održiv i mjerljiv način. Ako to učinimo, zaista možemo siromaštvo učiniti prošlošću.
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.
Upravo me to – ta cijela filozofija – potaknulo da započnem svoj trenutni projekt, pod imenom «Acumen Fund» (Pametni fond), koji nastoji napraviti mini-planove kako bismo to mogli izvesti s vodom, zdravstvom i stanovanjem u Pakistanu, Indiji, Keniji, Tanzaniji i Egiptu. Htjela bih malo govoriti o tome i nekim primjerima, tako da dobijete sliku o onome što radimo. No, prije toga – a ovo je još nešto što me iritira – htjela bih još malo govoriti o tome tko su siromašni. Prečesto govorimo o njima kao o snažnim, ogromnim masama ljudi koji čeznu za slobodom, a u stvarnosti, priča je zaista zapanjujuća. Gledno u cjelini, 4 milijarde ljudi na Zemlji zarađuje manje od 4 dolara dnevno.
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.
O njima govorimo kad mislimo na «siromašne». Ako to skupite, to je treće najveće gospodarstvo na Zemlji, a većina tih ljudi ipak je nevidljiva. Ondje gdje mi obično radimo žive ljudi koji zarađuju između jednog i tri dolara dnevno. Tko su ti ljudi? To su seljaci i radnici u tvornicama. Rade u vladinim uredima. Vozači su. Sluge su. Većinom plaćaju potrebna dobra i usluge kao što su voda, zdravstvena skrb i stanovanje, a plaćaju 30 do 40 puta više od svojih pandana iz srednje klase – barem ondje gdje radimo u Karachiju i Nairobiju. Siromašni su voljni donijeti, i donose, pametne odluke, ako im pružite tu mogućnost.
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.
Dakle, dva primjera. Jedan je u Indiji, gdje ima 240 milijuna seljaka, od kojih većina zaradi manje od 2 dolara dnevno. Ondje gdje radimo u Aurangabadu, zemlja je izuzetno isušena. Ljudi u prosjeku zarađuju 60 centi do dolara. Ovaj momak u rozom socijalni je poduzetnik, ime mu je Ami Tabar. On je vidio što se događalo u Izraelu, to je nešto širi pristup, i smislio kako provesti navodnjavanje sustavom kap po kap, što je način dovođenja vode izravno do uzgajanih biljaka. Međutim, prije je to bilo kreirano samo za velike farme, stoga je Ami Tabar to prilagodio za osminu jutra. Nekoliko principa: gradi malo, ali da se može neograničeno proširivati i da si siromašni mogu to priuštiti.
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.
Ova obitelj, Sarita i njen muž, kupili su zemljište za 15 dolara kad su doslovno živjeli u šupi s tri zida s valovitim željeznim krovom. Nakon jedne žetve, dovoljno su si povećali primanja da kupe drugi sustav za svojih četvrt jutra. Srela sam ih nekoliko godina kasnije, kad su zarađivali 4 dolara dnevno, što je praktički srednji sloj u Indiji, i pokazali su mi betonirane temelje koje su upravo postavili za izgradnju svoje kuće. Kunem se, mogli ste vidjeti budućnost u očima te žene. Uistinu to vjerujem.
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?
Danas ne možete govoritu o siromaštvu, a da ne spomenete i zaštitne mreže za krevet, i opet, svaka čast Jeffreyu Sachsu s Harvarda jer je svijetu dao svoju ideju - za 5 dolara možete spasiti život. Malarija je bolest koja ubija 1 do 3 milijuna ljudi godišnje. Prijavljeno je 300 do 500 milijuna slučajeva. Procjenjuje se da Afrika godišnje gubi 13 milijardi dolara zbog te bolesti. 5 dolara može spasiti život. Možemo slati ljude na Mjesec, vidjeti ima li života na Marsu -- zašto ne možemo nabaviti mreže od 5 dolara za 500 milijuna ljudi?
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.
No, pitanje zapravo nije: "Zašto ne možemo?". Pitanje je kako možemo pomoći Afrikancima da to učine sami? Mnogo je prepreka. Prvo: preniska proizvodnja. Drugo: previsoka cijena. Treće: ovo je dobra cesta u – vrlo blizu lokacije naše tvornice. Distribucija je prava noćna mora, ali nije nemoguća. Počeli smo davanjem zajma od 350 000 dolara najvećem tradicionalnom proizvođaču mreža za krevet u Africi kako bi mogli prenijeti tehnologiju iz Japana i napraviti izdržljive mreže, koje traju 5 godina. Evo nekoliko slika tvornice.
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.
Danas, tri godine kasnije, tvrtka je zaposlila još tisuću žena. S oko 600 000 dolara u plaćama doprinosi gospodarstvu Tanzanije. To je najveća tvrtka u Tanzaniji. Kapacitet je trenutno 1,5 milijuna mreža, do kraja godine 3 milijuna. Nadamo se da će do kraja sljedeće godine biti 7 milijuna. Dakle, proizvodnja funkcionira. No, što se tiče distribucije, svijet u cjelini ima još mnogo posla. Sada 95% ovih mreža kupuje UN i daje ih većinom ljudima u Africi. Promatramo izgradnju na temelju jednog od najdragocjenijih resursa Afrike: ljudi. Njihovih žena.
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.
Želim da upoznate Jacqueline, moju imenjakinju, koja ima 21 godinu. Da se rodila bilo gdje osim u Tanzaniji, vjerujte mi, mogla bi upravljati Wall Streetom. Vodi dvije linije i već je uštedjela dovoljno novca za predujam za svoju kuću. Zarađuje oko dva dolara dnevno, stvara fond za obrazovanje i rekla mi je da se neće udati ni imati djecu dok ovo ne završi. Stoga, kad sam joj rekla za našu ideju – da bismo možda mogli uzeti model Tupperwarea iz SAD-a i pronaći način kako bi žene same mogle ići i prodavati te mreže drugima – brzo je počela kalkulirati koliko bi ona sama mogla zaraditi i prijavila se za to.
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.
Naučili smo lekciju od IDEO-a, jedne od naših najdražih tvrtki, i brzo izradili prototip te smo odveli Jacqueline u područje gdje živi. Dovela je 10 žena s kojima inače komunicira da vidi može li prodati te mreže, 5 dolara po komadu, iako ljudi kažu da ih nitko neće kupiti, i mnogo smo naučili o prodavanju stvari. Nije započela s našim idejama, malariju nije ni spomenula sve do samog kraja. Prvo je govorila o udobnosti, statusu, ljepoti. Ove mreže, rekla je, ako ih stavite na pod, kukci će izići iz kuće. Djeca mogu spavati noću; kuća izgleda lijepo; možete ih objesiti na prozore. Počeli smo praviti i zavjese, i ne samo da je lijepo, nego ljudi mogu vidjeti status – da vam je stalo do vaše djece. Tek je tada spomenula spašavanje života djece. Mnogo toga možemo naučiti o tome kako prodati dobra i usluge siromašnima.
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)
Za kraj bih htjela reći da postoji ogromna prilika da siromaštvo učinimo prošlošću. Da bismo to izveli kako treba, moramo stvoriti korisne poslovne modele koji su mjerljivi i koji funkcioniraju za Afrikance, Indijce, ljude iz svih zemalja u razvoju koji pripadaju u ovu kategoriju, i da to mogu raditi sami. Naposljetku, bitan je angažman. Bitno je shvatiti da ljudi ne žele ostatke, da žele sami donositi svoje odluke; žele riješiti svoje probleme. Ako uključite ljude u to, ne omogućujete dostojanstvo samo njima, već i sebi. Stoga vas molim da sljedeći put razmislite kako se uključiti u ovu ideju i priliku koju svi imamo – da ostavimo siromaštvo u prošlosti – tako što ćete postati dijelom procesa, napustiti podjelu svijeta na "nas" i "njih" i shvatiti da se radi o svima nama, i svijetu u kojem želimo zajedno živjeti i dijeliti ga. Hvala. (Pljesak)