Hello!
My
name is Eisha Sarkar and I am a writer, educator, peacebuilder and
designer based in Gujarat, India. I thank Asef (Majidi) and the Social
Entrepreneurship Council at The University of the Pacific for
inviting me to share my stories.
I
became interested in the idea of social entrepreneurship after
reading Jacqueline Novogratz's book, The Blue Sweater. Some of you
may be familiar with her work and Acumen, a non-profit global venture
fund, she founded, which helps
build financially sustainable organizations that deliver affordable
goods and services and in turn, improve the lives of the poor. The
organization is headquartered in New York and has offices in India,
Pakistan, Kenya and Ghana. In the early 1990s, she founded the first
microfinance institution in Rwanda called Duterimbere.
In
Kigali, Jaqueline found a group of 20 unwed mothers who were in a
baking project and undertook sewing orders. They hardly baked or
sewed and the women earned fifty cents a day. The charity that was
supporting them was losing $650 a month. They would have trebled the
women's incomes by just handing them the money instead of 'giving the
poor women something nice to do till all the money ran out'.
Jacqueline proposed the idea that they run the organization like a
business and not charity. They all agreed and The Blue Bakery was
established. Within
eight months, the women were earning $2 a day, much more than most
women in Kigali earned and sometimes they even earned more than $3.
For the first time in their lives, their incomes allowed them to
decide when to say yes and when to say no. Money gave them confidence
and choice and in turn, dignity.
About
two years ago, I met an enterprising couple – Shyam and Swati
Bedekar – in Vadodara, India. They run an organization called
Vatsalya Foundation, which helps set up sanitary napkin-manufacturing
units in rural homes. Swati, a teacher by profession, noticed how
girls in tribal areas skipped school at the time of their menses.
Within homes, they were forced into isolation for those five days a
month. They had no access to sanitary napkins (the ones in the market
were too expensive) and used old rags, newspapers, ash, mud, etc,
during their periods. Naturally, the incidence of infection was very
high. It took years of research for Swati and Shyam to come up with a
viable solution: a low-cost eco-friendly sanitary pad that could be
incinerated without creating any hazardous by-products.
While
initially they started sourcing and distributing the pads, the couple
realized the only way they could keep costs down is by creating
manufacturing set-ups in people's homes. Shyam made a machine that
would be easy to operate in a small room. Thus started Sakhi, an
organization run by women that creates low-cost eco-friendly sanitary
napkins. Rural women, many of them illiterate, run it like a
business. I have met some of them. A few years ago, they would not
even utter a word in front of their husbands. Today, they are
comfortable walking up to a manager to open a bank account. A single
unit in a village makes a lot of difference. Watching their mothers
make the pads, encourages the girls to use them and makes them more
hygiene-conscious. The women are able to financially support their
husbands and girls no longer drop out of school citing menstruation
as the reason.
Sakhi
has been written about in various newspapers in India and abroad. On
one occasion when I was with Swati, I was introduced to Amy Grace
Peake from UK, who was so moved by the plight of 40000 Syrian women
refugees in the Zataari refugee camp in Jordan, that she chose to do
something about bringing them dignity and jobs. Amy managed to cut
the red tape and get the UN sanction to create a small unit at the
refugee camp where Sakhi's machines were installed to manufacture
sanitary napkins and incontinence pads. The enterprise is run by
women refugees. This is an example of people from different parts of
the world coming together to solve a social and health issue in
another part of the world. It's about collective social
responsibility.
We
look at enterprise in terms of income generation and jobs, but it's
also about building capacities and skills and creating an employable
taskforce. I volunteer for a one-to-one peacebuilding initiative
called Pax Populi. It is a Latin phrase and means peace of the
people. In 2007, Robert McNulty, a professor of ethics and Bentley
University in Massachusetts, founded the non-profit, Applied Ethics,
Inc, with the goal to support peacemaking through education and
economic development. Pax Populi Academy is an online school, where
students in Afghanistan are connected with English and Math tutors
from around the world. Four decades of war have destroyed the country
and ruined its education system. Since English is the global language
for business communication, we try to build bridges between countries
and cultures through our English tutoring programs. Pax
Populi members are from Afghanistan, USA, Canada, UK, France, Greece,
India and South Korea. I joined this initiative as a tutor to
understand and learn about the very rich Afghan culture. I have
taught students in two Afghan cities – Herat
and Kabul. As Pax Populi's Social Media Manager, I interact with
hundreds of Afghan students who dream of making their country safe
and prosperous again. I always had tremendous respect for Afghan
peoples and their literature and my respect for them has grown
immensely since I joined this organization. I have made friends even
outside the program and one such is Asef, who is one of the most
hardworking people I know.
Education,
health, poverty alleviation and peace rank among the UN Sustainable
Development Goals that we seek to achieve over the next 15 years to
make the world a better place. I believe cross-cultural,
multi-platform social enterprises will become the driving forces to
attain these goals.
Thank
you.
To listen to me talk, please click here
