The Blue Sweater

Business and charity rub elbows when a young woman trained as a banking-executive leaves the corporate world and teams with charitable organizations. She visits Africa, Pakistan, and India to introduce business strategies to women in poor regions.

The overall lesson that The Blue Sweater, written by Jaqueline Novogratz, offers is that simply giving charity to others, although generous, is not the best way to help. Jacqueline's goal in the regions she visited was to help set up small-scale business loans, making money available to women. Money earned by men would not always trickle down to their wives and children. Loans were being made available to women with the premise that when women make money that they will ultimately take the money home to their families. Women were taught if they could borrow cash at a low interest they could sell more goods, and take home more money to their families.

Jaqueline Novogratz worked in Rwanda before its genocide in 1994, and revisited Rwanda post-genocide. Her travel experiences give her the rare opportunity to share her personal perspectives about how things had changed and how some things remained the same in the region. In one passage she writes about her visit inside a prison to reunite with a woman with whom she had previously known through her work helping to organize and create a women-owned bakery business. This woman is now serving time for her crimes during that awful period in Africa history.

I did like this book, but I am not so sure I could honestly tell you to rush out and get this book. I read it from cover to cover, but it took me several weeks to finish. I was struggling with it. It was not written in a fashion that "sucked me in." I was initially intrigued by the story of "the blue sweater" which gave this book its name, and also serves as a true story creatively used to entice book sales. The endearing "we-are-all-connected" story about Jaqueline's charity sweater she finds being worn several years later by a young boy in Africa is told in the first four pages of the book. It is not mentioned again until page 243. The totality of the book didn't feed my spirit like I was anticipating. In the end (in the middle of the book actually) I was left asking myself "Is this all I get?" And in the end I felt there was no real pay off for me muddling through to the end.

Giving to charities is a good thing. It helps others in need and can also give you a tax-deduction. This book will open your eyes (if they weren't open already) as to how charity, simply giving away funds, is not always the best way to help someone. Does this mean we should not be charitable? Of course not. But it is important to know how our charitable funds are going to help.

Jaqueline Novvogratz is the founder of CEO of Acumen Fund, a nonprofit organization that invests in sustainable enterprises bringing health-care, safe water, alternative energy, and housing to low-income people in under-developing world.