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 da počnem sa pričom, a la Set Godin, iz perioda kada sam imala 12 godina. Moj ujak Ed mi je poklonio prelepi plavi džemper - bar sam mislila da je bio lep. I imao je čupave zebre preko stomaka, i planina Kilimandžaro i Mont Meru su bile tačno preko grudi i isto bile čupave. I nosila sam ga kad god sam mogla, misleći da je to najveličanstvenija stvar koju posedujem.
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 prvom razredu srednje škole, kada sam stajala sa nekim fudbalerima. I moje telo se očigledno promenilo, a Mat Musolina, koji je neosporno bio moj neprijatelj u srednjoj školi, rekao je gromkim glasom da više ne moramo da putujemo daleko na skijanje, već da svi možemo da skijamo na planini Novograc. (smeh) I bila sam toliko ponižena i osramoćena da sam istog trena otrčala kući kod mame i napala je zbog toga što mi je ikada dozvolila da nosim taj odvratan džemper. Odvezli smo se do "Gudvila" i bacile džemper pomalo svečano, sa idejom da više nikada neću morati o njemu da razmišljam ili da ga vidim.
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.
Da ubrzam - 11 godina kasnije, ja sam dvadesetpetogodišnje dete. Radim u Kigaliju, Ruanda, trčim kroz strme padine, kada ugledam, na nekih 10 metara od mene, malog dečaka - 11 godina - koji trči prema meni, noseći moj džemper. I mislim, ne, ovo nije moguće. Ali tako radoznala, otrčala sam do deteta - naravno uplašila sam boga oca u njemu - zgrabila sam ga za kragnu, okrenula je i tamo je bilo moje ime, napisano na kragni 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 meni predstavlja metaforu za nivo povezanosti koji svi na Zemlji imamo, i tome mi i dalje služi. Mi često ne shvatamo šta naše akcije ili ne-akcije čine ljudima za koje mislimo da nikada nećemo videti ili znati. Takođe je pričam jer govori o većoj obuhvatnoj priči o tome šta pomoć jeste i šta može biti. Da je ovo putovalo od "Gudvila" u Virdžiniji i našlo svoj put do veće industrije, koja je u tom trenutku davala milione tona upotrebljavane odeće Africi i Aziji. Što je odlična stvar, obezbediti odeću po niskoj ceni. U isto vreme, zasigurno je u Ruandi uništilo lokalnu maloprodajnu proizvodnju. Ne kažem da nije trebalo, već da moramo da budemo bolji u nalaženju odgovora na pitanja koja treba da razmotrimo kada razmišljamo o posledicama i odgovorima.
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, zadržaću se na Ruandi, negde oko 1985 - 86., gde sam radila dve stvari. Otvorila sam pekaru sa 20 neudatih majki. Zvale smo se "Medvedi Loših Vesti", a naša ideja je bila da osvojimo tržište poslom sa pecivom u Kigaliju, što nije bilo teško, jer pre nas to uopšte nije postojalo. I zato što smo imale dobar biznis model, i uspele smo u tome i posmatrala sam ove žene kako se menjaju na mikro nivou. Ali u isto vreme, otvorila sam banku za mikro finansiranje, a sutra će o "Graminu" da govori Ikbal Kadir, koji je rodonačelnik svih banaka za mikro finansiranje, što sada predstavlja svetski pokret - govoreći o idejama - ali tada je to bio novitet, naročito u našoj ekonomiji koja se kretala od razmene ka trgovini.
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.
Mnoge stvari smo dobro uradili. Usmerile smo se na biznis model i zahtevale da se predamo poslu. Na kraju dana, žene su same donosile odluke o tome kako će iskoristiti ovaj pristup kapitalu za izgradnju malih biznisa, zaraditi više, kako bi mogle bolje da se brinu o svojim porodicama.
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 razumele, ono što se dešavalo svuda oko nas, pomešane emocije straha, etnički sukobi, i igre oko pomoći, koja se vodila u ovom nevidljivom ali opipljivom pokretu unutar Ruande, u kojoj je u tom trenutku 30 posto budžeta predstavljalo stranu pomoć. Genocid se dogodio 1994., sedam godina pošto su sve ove žene radile zajedno na izgradnji ovog sna. A dobra vest je da je institucija, institucija banke trajala. Ustvari, postala je najveći zajmodavac za oporavak u zemlji. Pekara je bila potpuno zbrisana, ali ono što sam naučila je da je odgovornost važna - morate da gradite stvari uz pomoć ljudi na terenu, koristeći modele poslovanja u kojima, kao što bi Stiven Levit rekao, je motivacija važna. Razumite, koliko god kompleksni da smo, podsticaj je bitan.
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 kada mi je Kris pomenuo kako je sve što se u svetu dešava divno, da vidimo promenu duha vremena, sa jedne strane se potpuno slažem, i bila sam oduševljena da vidim šta se dešava sa G8 - da svet, zbog ljudi poput Tonija Blera i Bonoa i Boba Geldofa - svet govori o globalnom siromaštvu, svet govori o Africi na načine koji nikada ranije u svom životu nisam videla. To je sjajno. Ali opet, ono što me drži budnom noću jeste strah da ćemo gledati na uspehe G8 grupe - 50 milijardi dolara sakupljene pomoći za Afriku, 40 milijardi dolara smanjenog duga - kao na pobedu, kao na više od prvog poglavlja, kao naše moralno oslobođenje.
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, trebalo bi da vidimo to kao prvo poglavlje slavimo ga, zatvorimo i prepoznamo da nam je potrebno poglavlje broj dva koje je o delanju - o tome "kako da". I ako zapamtite samo jednu stvar iz ovoga što vam danas pričam, zapamtite da jedini način da se okonča siromaštvo, da pređe u istoriju jeste izgradnja održivih sistema na terenu koji donose ključna i pristupačna dobra i usluge siromašnima, na načine koji su finansijski održivi i merljivi. Ako to uradimo, zaista možemo učiniti da siromaštvo bude prošlost.
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.
I to je bilo ono - čitava ta filozofija - što me je podstaklo da započnem svoj trenutni poduhvat nazvan "Akumen Fond", koji pokušava da napravi neke nacrte koje bismo mogli primeniti na vodu, zdravstvo i stanovanje u Pakistanu, Indiji, Keniji, Tanzaniji i Egiptu. I želim da malo više govorim o tome i da vam predstavim neke primere da vidite šta je to čime se bavimo. Ali pre nego što to učinim - ovo je nešto oko čega stalno džangrizam - želim da vam govorim još malo o tome ko su siromašni. Zato što previše često o njima govorimo kao o jakim, velikim masama ljudi koji čeznu da budu slobodni, a ustvari je njihova priča vrlo zanimljiva. Na makro nivou, četiri milijarde ljudi na Zemlji zarađuje manje od četiri dolara na dan.
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 kada mislimo na siromašne. Ako saberete, to je treća najveća ekonomija na svetu, a opet, većina ovih ljudi je nevidljiva. Tamo gde obično radimo, ljudi zarađuju između jednog i tri dolara na dan. Ko su ovi ljudi? To su seljaci i fabrički radnici. Rade u vladinim kancelarijama. Vozači su. Oni su domaći. Oni obično plaćaju za osnovna dobra i usluge poput vode, zdravstva, stanovanja, a plaćaju 30 do 40 puta više nego što njihove kolege iz srednje klase plate - zasigurno u mesitma u kojima radimo, Karačiju i Najrobiju. I siromašni su voljni da donose pametne odluke, a to i rade, ako im date priliku.
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 primera. Jedan je iz Indije, gde postoji 240 miliona seljaka, većina od njih zarađuje manje od dva dolara dnevno. Tamo gde radimo u Urangbadu, zemlja je neverovatno suva. Vidite ljude koji prosečno zarađuju 60 centi do dolara. Ovaj momak u rozom je društveni preduzentik Ami Tabar. On je video šta se dešava u Izraelu, uzeo je veći pristup, i osmislio kako da napravi sistem za navodanjavanje - kap po kap, što je način donošenja vode direktno do rasada. Ali do tada je to bilo osmišljeno samo za velike farme, pa je Ami Tabar modifikovao ovo na 500m kvadratnih. Nekoliko principa - Gradite malo. Da može beskonačno da se širi i da bude pristupačno siromašnima.
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 porodica, Sarita i njen muž, kupili su spravu za 15 dolara kada su živeli - ali bukvalno u sobi od tri zida sa krovom od talasastog gvožđa. Posle jedne žetve, povećali su svoj dohodak dovoljno da kupe još jedan sistem za čitavo imanje kvadratnog kilometra. Nekoliko godina kasnije, srela sam ih. Oni sada zarađuju četiri dolara na dan, što je skoro srednja klasa u Indiji, i pokazali su mi osnovu od betona koju su tek postavili za izgradnju svoje kuće. I kunem se, mogli ste da vidite budućnost u očima te žene. Nešto u šta potpuno verujem.
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?
Ne možete govoriti o siromaštvu danas, a da ne govorite o mrežama za krevet protiv malarije, i još jednom čestitam Džefriju Saksu sa Harvarda što je svetu približio svoju strast - za pet dolara možete da spasite život. Malarija je bolest koja ubija od jednog do tri miliona ljudi godišnje. 300 do 500 miliona slučajeva se prijavi. Procenjeno je da Afrika gubi oko 13 milijardi dolara godišnje na ovu bolest. Pet dolara može da spasi život. Možemo da šaljemo ljude na mesec, možemo da vidimo da li ima života na Marsu - zašto ne možemo da damo mreže od pet dolara za 500 miliona 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.
Doduše, pitanje nije zašto ne možemo, pitanje je kako možemo pomoći Afrikancima da to učine sami za sebe? Ima puno prepreka. Jedan: proizvodnja je jako niska. Dva: cena je previsoka. Tri: ovo je dobar put za ulazak - odmah pored naše fabrike. Distribucija je noćna mora, ali nije nemoguća. Počeli smo sa pozajmicom od 350 000 dolara koje smo dali najvećem proizvođaču tradicionalnih mreža za krevet, u Africi, kako bi mogli da prenesu tehnologiju iz Japana i mogli da prave dugotrajne, mreže od pet dolara. Ovo su neke od slika fabrike.
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, kompanija je zaposlila još hiljadu žena. Ekonomiji Tanzanije doprinosi sa oko 600 000 dolara u platama. To je najveća kompanija u Tanzaniji. Proizvodna stopa u ovom momentu je 1, 5 miliona mreža, tri miliona do kraja godine. Nadamo se da ćemo imati sedam miliona na kraju sledeće godine. Dakle, proizvodna strana radi. Sa strane distribucije, ipak, kao svet, moramo mnogo da radimo. Trenutno, 95 posto ovih mreža kupuju UN, a onda ih poklanjaju prvenstveno ljudima u Africi. Gledamo da gradimo na jednom od najvrednijih resursa u Africi - ljudima. Njihovim ženama.
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.
Tako da želim da upoznate Žaklin, moju imenjakinju, koja ima 21 godinu. Da je rođena bilo gde drugde osim u Tanzaniji, kažem vam, mogla bi da upravlja Vol Stritom. Upravlja dvema proizvodnim linijama i već je uštedela dovoljno novca da uplati učešće za svoju kuću. Zarađuje oko dva dolara dnevno, otvara edukativni fond, i rekla mi je da se neće udavati ili imati decu dok ne završi ove stvari. I tako, kada sam joj rekla za našu ideju - da možda možemo da uzmemo "Taperver" model iz Amerike i nađemo način da žene same prodaju ove mreže drugima - brzo je počela da računa šta bi ona sama mogla da napravi i prijavila se.
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 omiljenih kompanija, brzo napravili prototip ovoga i odveli Žaklin u oblast u kojoj živi. Dovela je 10 žena sa kojima komunicira da vide da li mogu da prodaju ove mreže, za pet dolara za komad, uprkos činjenici da niko to neće kupiti, prema rečima drugih, i naučili smo mnogo o tome kako se prodaju stvari. Ne dolaziti da sopstvenim idejama, jer ona čak nije ni pričala o malariji sve do samog kraja. Prvo je pričala o komforu, statusu, lepoti. Ove mreže, rekla je, stavite ih na pod, bube napuste vašu kuću. Deca mogu da prespavaju noć, kuća izgleda lepo, okačite ih na prozor. I počeli smo da pravimo zavese, i ne samo da je lepo, već ljudi mogu da vide status - da vi brinete o svojoj deci. Tek onda je pričala o spašavanju dečijih života. Mnogo lekcija treba naučiti o tome kako prodavati stvari 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)
Želim da završim time da postoji ogromna prilika da siromaštvo postane prošlost. Da bi se to uradilo kako treba, moramo da gradimo biznis modele koji su važni, koji su merljivi i koji mogu da se primene na Afrikance, Indijce, ljude širom zemalja u razvoju koji odgovaraju ovoj kategoriji, koje oni mogu sami da primene. Jer, na kraju krajeva, radi se o angažovanju. Radi se o razumevanju da ljudi ne žele donacije, žele da sami donose odluke, žele sami da reše svoje probleme, a time što se angažujemo sa njima, ne samo da im podižemo dostojanstvo, već to činimo i sebi. I tako vas pozivam da sledeći put razmislite o tome kako da se povežete sa ovom idejom i ovom prilikom koju svi imamo - da siromaštvo postane prošlost - tako što ćete postati deo tog procesa i tako što ćete se pomeriti od mi-i-oni sveta i shvatiti da se zapravo radi o svima nama, i svetu u kojem svi zajedno želimo da živimo i delimo. Hvala vam. (aplauz)