An Outsider's Perspective, Part II

In Part I, I talked about Indira Ranamagar, an “insider” social entrepreneur who founded Prisoners Assistance Nepal.  Here are two stories of “outsiders,” both of whom took a step towards the inside, with very different results.

 

Story One:

Self-Employed Women’s Association, or SEWA, was born in 1971 in Ahmedabad, Gujarat.  A group of migrant women who worked in a local cloth market approached the Women’s Wing of the Textile Labour Association. The women were fed up with the horrible working conditions and the apathy with which society treated them.  They demanded change.  The head of the Women’s Wing, Dr. Ela Bhatt, heard their case.     

 

These women knew what they wanted – workers’ rights, collective bargaining power, job security.  And beyond their basic needs, they had loftier aspirations.  Chandaben, a woman who sold used scraps of cloth in the bazaar, is credited with a quote that helped launch a movement:  “We may be poor, but we are so many. Why don’t we start a bank of our own?  Our own women’s bank, where we are treated with the respect and service that we deserve.”  

 

Dr. Bhatt became ally and champion to these women and worked tirelessly to help them realize their demands.  As a lawyer, academic, and head of the TLA, Dr. Bhatt had access to people and resources that the women didn’t know existed.  She published articles, confronted leaders of industry, and organized public meetings that gave voice to hundreds of migrant women.  Out of all of this, a movement was born.

 

Today, SEWA offers poor women access to dozens of services, including health care, legal aid, and housing.  The association may be best known for SEWA Bank, a social business that provides financial services tailored to meet the needs of more than 125,000 women working in the informal sector.  As of 2008, the bank’s working capital was $18.6 million.  

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Story Two:

Jason Sadler is an American entrepreneur and the founder of iwearyourshirt.com.  For a fee, he and his team will promote your company by wearing a shirt with your logo on it, then taking pictures of themselves as human billboards. 

 

Two years ago, Sadler had an idea. His closet was overflowing with t-shirts he no longer wanted, as were, he assumed, closets all over the U.S.  Just throwing away thousands of unwanted shirts would be a waste.  Even if young Americans didn’t need their old t-shirts, somebody probably did.

 

And where is there greater need than in Africa?  

 

Sadler launched an initiative called 1 Million T Shirts and with this video, began calling for donations:

 

Though he had never been to Africa, Sadler was convinced that the epidemic of t-shirtlessness raged like wildfire.  Many Africans didn’t “half a half a shirt to their name,” and if he could bridge their excess demand with America’s excess supply, he’d be doing the world a great service.  (But as he says in the video, no long sleeves — Africa is hot, remember?)

 

With the launch of the video and the website, there was a deluge of t-shirt donations and rabid criticism.  

 

The donations came from people moved by the project’s slogan: “share the wealth, share your shirts; we’re going to change the world.”  

 

The criticism came primarily from the international aid community.  They decried the project as illogical, misguided, and dangerous.  Shirtlessness was not, in fact, an African epidemic.  Worse, a million free t-shirts would flood local markets, ruining the capacity of lower income merchants to earn money.  On top of all that, the African cotton industry was dying a prolonged death in the international market; in this light, discarded American t-shirts seemed more like a slap in the face than a gift.  

 

Much of the anger over the initiative was directed at Sadler himself.  In the eyes of his critics, he had unwittingly become a manifestation of all that has always been wrong with Western aid.  

 

To Sadler’s credit, he was open to re-evaluating his strategy.  He began talking to one of his most vocal critics, a Ugandan-born social entrepreneur named TMS Ruge.  These conversations led Sadler to scrap his original plan of donating t-shirts to Africa.  Together, Ruge and Stadler reshaped the vision of the project.  

 

The new plan: 1 Million T-Shirts would continue to collect donations, but instead of sending them overseas, the t-shirts would become material for handmade laptop covers, which would then be sold through retail outlets.  The profit would go to setting up scholarships for promising students from all over Africa. 

 

However, before the launch of the revamped project, Sadler pulled the plug.  “It didn’t feel right to me.  It didn’t feel like it was going to what I wanted it to do.  When we completely changed the focus of it…it didn’t seem like it was going to work for me.”

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These two stories are so different that it seems almost unfair to compare them.

Dr. Ela Bhatt is one of the world’s greatest living social reformers.  She’s one of just ten members of The Elders, an international human rights council founded by Nelson Mandela and chaired by Desmond Tutu.  A few years back, Hillary Clinton named Dr. Bhatt as her personal heroine.

Jason Sadler is a cocky young entrepreneur who styles himself after Richard Branson and Tim Ferris.  His product is his personality and vice versa.  If he’s ignorant with regards to the nuanced world of international development, it’s because he’s been too busy in his attempt to build a branded empire.

But these two stories are more interrelated than you might think.  The stark contrast between Dr. Bhatt and Sadler is actually helpful.  In their differences, the pillars of the outsider narrative become clear.

More on this in Part III.

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