Women's Initiative: Where Dreams Become Thriving Businesses

Can Our Clients Compete in a Global Market?

One of my on-going worries about the women we serve is who their markets are. Who will our new entrepreneurs sell to?

Some of the women Women’s Initiative helps are going to do great – they already have buyers ready for purchasing, they may have spent years in the field, they have an education. But by watching graduation after graduation, I can see that most will really struggle. Many don’t have great reading and writing skills. Many don’t live in a community that is already ready to purchase what they have to offer. What will their business futures be like? How best can Women’s Initiative help them?

I have been honestly losing sleep over these questions, wanting to understand the situation a bit better. Then last night it came to me. I just finished City of Joy, an expose on the slums of Calcutta, and began The World is Flat, an explanation of where global economics is headed. Calcutta--the City of Joy--is the perfect place for microenterprise. People live together in very close quarters. Their needs are not complex – they want to buy things like a cup of tea, a pot, a chair, a blanket. One small investment of capital in the City of Joy – a sewing machine, an extra shipment of supplies – can help someone go from eating one meal a day to two meals a day, which means the difference between starvation and survival.

After reading this, I realized how different poverty is in America. Poverty crosses boundaries of education and race. Unlike in India, in America poor people don't always all live together. In the US, often educated people are not poor, but sometimes they are. There isn’t a one size fits most approach that can be used. American microenteprise has to be quite dynamic if it is to be effective.

Likewise, Thomas Friedman offers some interesting ideas in the first chapters of The World is Flat. Friedman’s thesis is that the difference between the haves and the have-nots is lessening thanks to technology. Friedman uses India as his case in point, describing how outsourcing has given talented Indians good paying jobs, allowing them to retain their identity as Indians, while giving Americans relief from the un-creative day-to-day and thus helping them to focus more on their already very strong creative talents. He gives many examples of how companies that sourced specific job functions overseas ended up bringing more money to the US by hiring new employees, selling more products in the country where the work was being done, etc.

Friedman describes college graduates who have no place to put their talent. The new world of outsourcing and genuine Indian creativity is giving the Indian people a whole new opportunity to compete in the global market. And Friedman warns that if Americans don’t watch out, even the most low-paying educated jobs--such as after-school tutoring--could get outsourced.

And this realization gets to the heart of my night sweats – can our clients develop the ability to compete? Can they compete, can they stand on their own? If you had a ready market like the City of Joy, there would have to be a lot of sellers like you before the market would be too tight. But our clients are trying to run their businesses in an atmosphere of extreme competition. They aren’t just competing with people in their community. Often the nature of their businesses is competing with folks around the entire globe.

Perhaps our clients who are hairdressers and child care providers are not competing, but those who are jewelers, seamstresses, web designers--even after-school tutors--are competing in a global market. And how much do they know about the way the global market affects them both positively and negatively? How much of a dent can Women’s Initiative make in preparing them?

It isn’t just Women’s Initiative that has a responsibility to prepare. As citizens, we have a responsibility to make sure that children are properly educated. And we have an opportunity to create a world that is not focused solely on acquiring more and more material goods, but on acquiring more and more real happiness.

Even so, our clients face so many barriers, even after entering our doors. Barriers that go well beyond self esteem and directly into market economics. And still they will nearly double their income within a year of graduating from our basic program. Its an amazing thing, and there is a lot to digest….

Meet Heather Haxo Phillips

Heather Haxo Phillips, Women's Initiative's Development Director (or fundraising director), is spending the summer in India studying yoga. Here's her perspective on microenterprise work after two months in the birthplace of microcredit.

I have spent the last 6 weeks in India, where many people live on less than $1 a day.

As I walk down the streets, I see so many women and children without any shoes on their feet, whole families sleeping on the same patch of sidewalk night after night. We have all seen the face of third-world poverty in pictures, but seeing it live provides me with piercing understanding about how much the human sprit can endure.

Their lives are so hard. Yet, these families still have smiles on their faces, even if they have no food on their bellies. They have pride, community spirit, and a strong sense of morality.

Here in India, microenterprise has become very well known. It can change a woman’s life by providing her with a $5, $50 or even $500 loan. Many women on the street, like those I have seen, have taken advantage of what microentperise can offer them.

As the field has grown it has also become commercial. India’s president-elect is embroiled in scandal because the bank she founded – which offered microenterprise loans as well as regular loans – gave loans to family members and let them default, leaving aging pensioners without any access to their savings.

The scope of what a $500 microenterprise investment can do in India is a stark contrast to the US where $500 won’t even pay rent for a month.

Today the importance of my role in microenterprise really struck home. I was talking with the granddaughter of our servant. Her grandmother cannot read or write, she has been changing the diapers, cleaning the toilets and making the dinners of my family for more than 40 years. The granddaughter had other dreams, she is going to hotel school despite the fact that both her parents are dead.

After 6 weeks of living together this young woman - my maid, I guess you would say - finally ventured a conversation with me. She asked me what I studied in college and what I did for a living. She asked me what it was like to go around the globe, because she has never been outside of the city limits.

And then she turned to me and said, “Do you know that you have the best job ever?” That hit me between the eyes.

For most young, educated people in India, the best job one can get is working in a call center – your name stops being Saraswati because they want you to be Sarah, Manu becomes Michael. And you work American hours which means arriving at work in the dead of night. If you don’t have an education, you work doing whatever your parents did.

This girl has escaped that. She will graduate from hotel school, and if she is lucky she will someday be able to work the front desk. But it isn’t her dream job.

When I told her about the work I was doing to help women and their families, her eyes gleamed. She felt that it was the most important work that she could think of. And she should know.