Jacqueline Novogratz Quotes

I've learned that generosity is far easier than justice and that, in the highly distorted markets of the poor, it is all too easy to veer only toward the charitable, to have low
or no
expectations for low-income people. This does nothing but reaffirm prejudices on all sides.

Very small investments can release the infinite potential that lies in all of us.

If there's one value that is immutable, it's integrity or respect, for others and for yourself.

To be part of building a movement, you have to keep moving.

When systems are broken, it's an opportunity for invention and innovation.

As our world becomes increasingly interconnected, we need to find better solutions that will include everyone in today's opportunities. (197)

Entrepreneurs are the seekers of solutions, and that they will go into these places where both market and traditional aid has failed or traditional charity has failed.

I finally understood: In order to contribute to Africa, I would have to know myself better and be clearer about my goals. I would have to be ready to take Africa on its own terms, not mine, and to learn my limits and present myself not as a do-gooder with a big heart, but as someone with something to give and gain by being there. Compassion wasn't enough

When it comes to solving problems of poverty, impact investing can act as a catalyst, but it is not a silver bullet. Successful businesses serving the poor need more than investment capital. They also need infrastructure to enable effective distribution, strong regulatory systems, access to markets, technical assistance as they scale up, and more

I'm relentless in that I deeply believe in people.

Too often people view idealists as naive.

There are probably no more market-oriented individuals on the planet, than low income people.

Dignity is more important to the human spirit than wealth.

A sustainable world means working together to create prosperity for all.

We live in a world in which we're seeing an increasing gap between the haves and the have-nots.

The only way to end poverty, to make it history, is to build viable systems on the ground that deliver critical and affordable goods and services to the poor, in ways that are financially sustainable and scaleable. If we do that, we really can make poverty history.

In today's world, the elites are growing even more comfortable with one another across national lines, yet at the same time, less comfortable with low-income people who share their nationality. How we create those bonds of community that are truly global as well as national is one of our generation's great challenges.

By helping a woman, you help a family.

I dream a world in no one feels the need for or fear of predatory behavior, in which each of us walks with the knowledge of how beautiful - and valuable - is each human life.

By going from the bottom-up again, we see where successes work, and you can also see where the status quo can be the biggest obstacle or roadblock to success. The kind of entrepreneurs in whom we need to invest are the kind who are willing to fight that status quo, bureaucracy, complacency, and corruption.

Freedom ultimately is dignity. And dignity, not income, is the opposite of poverty.

There is power in creating a small model, and then you can create an alliance of other small models.

I have also been touched by the dark side of power and leadership.

Leaders can get stuck in groupthink because they're really not listening, or they're listening only to what they want to listen to, or they actually think they're so right that they're not interested in listening. And that leads to a lot of suboptimal solutions in the world.

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.

We see very, very high rates of C-sections, Cesarean sections, in India. Lots of reasons for it, high levels of malnutrition have meant that women have very small pelvic areas often, so if they have larger babies, it's very hard to deliver.

As a young woman, I dreamed of changing the world. In my twenties, I went to Africa to try and save the continent, only to learn that Africans neither wanted nor needed saving. Indeed, when I was there, I saw some of the worst that good intentions, traditional charity, and aid can produce ...

As a 25-year-old banker, I decided to leave my career and change the world. This sounds like a move that a 25-year-old banker might make today - to escape the chaos.

I've heard it said that the most dangerous animal on the planet is the adolescent male.

What farmers gain most of all from the increase in agricultural productivity, of course, is choice.

Africa can stun you in an instant. It can throw floods and drought and disease at you, sometimes all at the same time. In the next moment, it will tease you with its magnificent beauty, so even if you don't forget, you can find a way to forgive. Ultimately, it keeps you coming back for more.

We can send people to the Moon; we can see if there's life on Mars - why can't we get $5 [mosquito] nets to 500 million people?

I should learn to be a bird on the outside and a tiger within.

Why do some people stop growing at age 30, just going from work to the couch and television, when others stay vibrant, curious, almost childlike into their nineties?

What we yearn for as human beings is to be visible to each other.

I am an insomniac. Most of my nights include a moment of wakening. Often I will make my way to the kitchen to make tea and read for awhile.

Failure can be an incredibly motivating force.

Things are always harder than you think they're going to be.

I also took issue with the practice of donors typically only funding programs instead of institutions ... That is a fine strategy for providing alms or direct charity. At the same time, no one would invest in a company and not expect it to pay for hiring great people, paying the rent, and keeping the lights on. We need philanthropists to build institutions in the social sector too.

I've learned that there is no currency like trust and no catalyst like hope. There is nothing worse for building relationships than pandering, on one hand, and preaching, on the other. And the most important quality we must all strengthen in ourselves is that of a deep human empathy, for that will provide the most hope of all
and the foundation for our collective survival.

People need to believe that they can participate fully in the decisions that affect their lives and have a stake in the societies in which they live

May each of you live lives of immersion. They won't necessarily be easy lives. But in the end, it is all that will sustain us.

Even when early innovations start to succeed, it is not uncommon to see growing businesses sabotaged for threatening the status quo.

Acumen Fund's patient capital investment in Western Seed is intended to enhance the food security and economic independence of Kenya's smallholder farmers.

The Pakistanis are very resilient people.

What we really yearn for as human beings is to be visible.

Your job is not to be perfect, your job is only to be human.

Each of us can work to change a small portion of events. And it's in the total of all those acts that the history of this generation will be written.

President Kennedy said that those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable. I would say that the converse is true.

One of the first things that surprised me in a positive, wonderfully positive way, is that this works - patient capital works.

Despite the hundreds of non-governmental organizations and the continued outpouring of foreign aid, East Africa remains as a region overwhelmed by extreme poverty.

This is the secret of accompaniment. I will hold a mirror to you and show you your value, bear witness to your suffering, and to your light. And over time, you will do the same for me, for within the relationship lies the promise of our shared dignity and the mutual encouragement needed to do the hard things.
Whatever you aim to do, whatever problem you hope to address, remember to accompany those who are struggling, those who are left out, who lack the capabilities needed to solve their own problems. We are each other's destiny. Beneath the hard skills and firm strategic priorities needed to resolve our greatest challenges lies the soft, fertile ground of our shared humanity. In that place of hard and soft is sustenance enough to nourish the entire human family.

Our actions - and inaction - touch people we may never know and never meet across the globe.

You should focus on being more interested than interesting.

Just start Don't wait for perfection. Just start and let the work teach you.

Listening is not only about waiting, but it's also learning how better to ask questions.

There's a real moral imperative in being an organization that takes the time to sit and listen to the customers and the people they're serving.

Being poor doesn't mean being ordinary.

There are only two mistakes one can make along the road to truth; not going all the way, and not starting. - BUDDHA

There are cases where government-to-government aid actually has worked. Look at the eradication of smallpox and the near eradication of polio. But these are really top down solutions that require government-to-government support and aid.

Poverty is too complex to be answered with a one-size-fits-all approach, and if there is any place that illustrates that complexity, as well as a better way forward, it is Rwanda.

I was encouraged to break all the rules but to take the best of philanthropy, the best of investing, and the best of development finance, and experiment with new ways to create this venture capital model of using philanthropy to back patient capital investments, and then build solutions that were measured in terms of the kind of impact and change they were making on people's lives and in the world, not just on the financial return.

In India, we now see many highly qualified professionals ready to work in the rural hinterland and in their own towns and cities to tackle development issues directly without depending much on the government.

When Jeff Sachs says every poor person should receive a free bed net, I agree - but in reality, many end up not receiving one. And I don't live in a world of shoulds.

Sometimes very small investments can release enormous, infinite potential that exists in all of us.

Where micro-finance focuses on small loans to individual, low-income women, think of Acumen Fund more like a venture capital fund.

All people deserve access to health at prices they can afford.

When we were walking through the narrow alleys [of the Mathare Valley slums], it was literally impossible not to step in the raw sewage and the garbage alongside the little homes. But at the same time it was also impossible not to see the human vitality, the aspiration and the ambition of the people who live there.

In the case of maternal health care, you look at, well naturally, it's the mother who's the customer, who makes the decisions. But in truth, the mother in many areas, in certain parts of India, the mother has very little decision-making power at all. The real decision-maker is the mother-in-law.

Philanthropists should find innovations that release the energies of people. Individuals don't want to be taken care of --they need to be given a chance to fulfill their own potential. (142)

Power corrupts on an equal-opportunity basis.

There are 60 million generators in Nigeria. The generator owners and distributors have a strong incentive to not encourage the distribution of solar and other alternative energies, even though it's better for the country, it's better for people. As a world, we've got to get more serious about confronting those obstacles. This knows no culture, no race, no ethnicity.

After all this atrocity, this is how human beings really pray.

Just look at the track record of these giveaway programs," I protested. "Broken mills, lower production levels of rice after 20 years of work and money. This can't be right ... the only way this will work for the farmers is if they own it themselves, if they can see their own lives getting better because of their efforts and ability to control their own futures and not have to wait around for the government.

The best change that comes to the world is when all parties are seeing each other as equal, and all parties have the opportunity to be transformed. That really goes back to the idea of dignity.

For too much of history, we've viewed the world's precious resources - both environmental and human - as things to extract, to make the most of in order to maximize their potential.

The human spirit is extraordinary. If we give the 3 billion people who live in poverty the opportunity to change their lives, they will. For too long, we've looked at needing to "save" these people - with an emphasis on "these people" - rather than removing the constraints keeping them from solving their own problems.

What would the world look like if we asked ourselves the following more often; are our actions helping others find a way to feel more freer, more dignified and more beautiful?

If we have learned anything, it is the horror that can happen when people don't think for themselves, but instead follow authority blindly.

I think I still have a great sense of adventure and trust, and am surprisingly idealistic given all the horrible things I've seen since I was 25. I think how I have changed is that I have a much deeper understanding of the dark forces in the world, of power.

Hope is a path on the mountainside. At first there is no path. But then there are people passing that way. And there is a path. - LU XUN

The poor also are willing to make, and do make, smart decisions, if you give them that opportunity.

I've been working on issues of poverty for more than 20 years, and so it's ironic that the problem that and question that I most grapple with is how you actually define poverty. What does it mean?

Philanthropy is no longer about writing a check for $10,000 to the opera.

I think we so often equate leadership with being experts - the leader is supposed to come in and fix things. But in this interconnected world we live in now, it's almost impossible for just one person to do that.

Impact investing has become a broad umbrella that includes all investing with a focus on both financial return and social impact, but in its best form, impact investing prioritizes impact over returns and achieves outcomes that traditional investing cannot.

Every day we have a choice. We can take the easier road, the more cynical road, which is a road sometimes based on a dream of a past that never was, fear of each other, distancing and blame, or we can take the much more difficult path, the road of transformation, transcendence, compassion, and love, but also accountability and justice.

We are connected, but the weave is sometimes fragile. (192)

When people gain income, they gain choice, and that is fundamental to dignity.

People have to understand that unless social enterprise is experimental, it will not succeed in making a difference.

When I first went to Africa, I thought that I was personally going to save the continent, if not the world.

The older I get, the more determined I feel to do whatever I can to help release that human potential somehow. Not in a fluffy way nor in a hardcore way. But in that middle ground, that marriage of love and power. I'm not afraid of either.

Standing with the poor means walking away from unethical leaders, even when their companies are 'succeeding.'

Many business leaders are seeing the relationship between long term success and sustainability, and that's very heartening.

Wealth today has been created by a world view dominated by fast-moving networks, open information, bottom-up entrepreneurialism.

How you see where you are always depends on where you've been.

Girls and women are most victimised in societies where boys and men are disempowered.

You have to learn to ask questions in a way that will elicit more nuanced answers, rather than the answers you would like to get.

The time for us to begin innovating and looking for new solutions is now.

My whole life has been spent with people who have taken every knock in the world. No advantages. Yet they greet you with a big smile, they give you what they have, and they keep coming back. They are the fighters.