I just finished reading an extraordinary chapter in Jacqueline Novogratz‘ book The Blue Sweater where she visited two Rwandan women in prison. About a decade earlier, Jacqueline had built with these women a business that empowered Rwandan women to make a living with their own businesses. She saw how hard these women worked on that cause and how dedicated they were to helping raise women and ultimately families out of abject poverty. The women were in prison, however, because of charges of being complicit or ordering genocidal acts during the awful hundred-day genocide in the spring of 1994. One of the women was actually appointed the Minister of Justice by the government just prior to the genocide. There were stories of her accompanying the then President of the country to the southern town of Butare where genocide had until then been avoided, and after the visit was like many other places in Rwanda, the site of brutal massacres of hundreds or thousands of people.
Jacqueline had a lot of trouble coming to terms with the fact that these women were the same people, capable of such good and such evil. It threatened her world view and she truly struggled with this. After visiting Agnes, the former Minister of Justice, Jacqueline wrote
I determined to work on gaining more courage to put myself in others’ shoes and more vision to enable me to create ways for them to help themselves. I wanted to become part of a movement to extend to all of our humanity the notion that all human beings are created equal - for our world was shrinking even then. Somewhere along the way Agnes must have put aside that notion of our shared humanity, possibly from a combination of real fear and the equally real desire for power. We’ll never fully know. (J. Novogratz, The Blue Sweater, Rodale, 2009, pg. 169).
At the end of this particular chapter in the book, after finding out that her other friend had been released, Jacqueline wrote
As Our world becomes increasingly interconnected, we need to find better solutions that will include everyone in today’s opportunities. Monsters will always exist. There’s one inside each of us. But an angel lives there, too. There is no more important agenda than figuring out how to slay one and nurture the other.
That is such a powerful statement, that last sentence! I believe that agenda is something that trancends many of the activities and challenges of our human existence. We all know so well now that a united intervention in Rwanda would have been able to quash the genocidal acts of the previous regime. Inside of ourselves, however, we all need to find ways to slay the monster, and in many cases that means to overcome our fears and act responsibly.
How many problems of life in our industrialized life generate a sense of fear in us? Economic recession and unemployment, even competitition in our fast-paced industrial markets. Our fears can create desires that may result in hurtful circumstances for others, whether they be the most unfortunate in society or simply the competition.
Jacqueline’s determination to empathize more with others and to work on her vision to find ways to help them help themselves is, I believe, an example of the fundamental lesson she learned from her experiences in Rwanda. I feel in a way that it is also a call for myself and anyone who cares to listen to find ways to help others help themselves, and to do this through empathy. It’s a lesson that I think Muhammed Yunus learned early on when he was thinking about giving money to poor women in his home country of Bangledesh. It is also a lesson I think many social enterpreneurs have learned as they have sought solutions to troubling problems.