Last week I had the pleasure of attending the Catherine B Reynolds Fellows Social Entrepreneurship 2010 Summit in Washington DC. Seventy of us had the privilege of hearing from over 30 of the country’s leaders in the House of Representatives, the Supreme Court, the White House, the Central Intelligence Agency, national health and education organizations and various members of the press. After this life-changing event I delved into Paul Farmer’s Pathologies of Power for a Précis I had to write for PID. After reading the first 50 pages of his inspirational book, I felt I was given the words to articulate the nebulous mass of information I gleaned from 3 days in Washington DC.
Each of the individuals listed above demonstrated, in different ways, how personal narrative can be employed to achieve change, the dynamics of power and privilege, the finer points of structural violence, human rights and the necessity of social structures in achieving change. While I can’t go into detail regarding each of these points, or each of our distinguished speakers, I would like to make a few points regarding the most memorable speakers at the event.
(Pictured: Jaqueline Novogratz)
Anthony Romero and Jacqueline Novogratz are masters of the narrative and use their narratives to highlight power structures that each are battling. Romero pointed out that, as Executive Director of the ACLU, he is charged with protecting our First Amendment right to protest. He is currently involved in a case defending a man who was prevented from protesting against gay rights. Romero pointed out how important it is that he, as a homosexual Executive Director of the ACLU, focuses on protecting the rights of an individual - who wants nothing more than to protest his rights as a gay man. This story connects Romero’s vision of change - of an American Society where the rights of all citizens are protected regardless of personal beliefs - including the rights of those to protest whatever and wherever they choose. After experiencing and consistently reading about the lack of basic human rights in developing countries, and how the lack of a rule of law breeds the corruption, poverty and misery around the world, I sleep safer now knowing that Anthony Romero is out there leading an organization designed to protect my rights as a citizen.
Jacqueline Novogratz’s speech was, to me, the most compelling of the entire conference. She started out telling us that after leaving a successful Wall Street position she went to Kigali, Rwanda to start the first microfinance bank that country had seen. After she left Rwanda, genocide ripped the country apart, including her micro-loan bank. The recipients/participants of her microfinance project in Rwanda played almost every role imaginable in the genocide. Some watched their families be killed, some died, and others were perpetrators. After this story Novogratz acknowledged that what she had tried to do had failed, and if things were going to get better for the world’s poor she needed to attack the root causes of poverty (housing, clean water, health care) in really big ways. She’s done this through Acumen Fund and her system of ‘patient capital’ has changed the lives of millions. While Novogratz’s success is impressive it is not what was awe inspiring to me- it was the fact that early on she recognized her initial development work was largely in an ‘information silo’ and that only through the combined efforts of many disciplines could she change lives. She also recognized that in order to effect substantial change, one cannot disregard politics and their underlying power structures when looking at long term development within a country. Her approach to development closely resembles the work and ideology of Paul Farmer, a self-professed human rights advocate who recognizes that only through the combined efforts of many disciplines will change occur. He, like Norogratz, understands that to deny the larger issues of structural violence/political power and privilege within a country is to deny the poor any meaningful chance to escape
destitute poverty.
(Pictured: Anthony Romero)
Finally, after watching the final votes in the Senate regarding the historic health care bill we all had the privilege of hearing from Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. Bright-eyed and excited, Speaker Pelosi described the story of a young woman whose child had a terrible cough, the doctor ordered an x-ray but the young mother did not have health insurance and couldn’t pay. The doctor and mother decided to wait and see if the child improved and three days later the child died. She then went on to explain that children will be the first beneficiaries of the health care bill and children will no longer die in the arms of their mother’s due to a lack of insurance coverage. Pelosi articulately navigated her narrative, and its connection from the plight of the poor in America to larger structures within politics and, finally, her vision of change.
It’s hard to sit down and sum up a life changing experience, but if I had to so in a few sentences, I would say the following about the Reynolds trip to DC: It brought into focus issues of structural violence, politics and power, human rights and the power of the story for social change. It gave me a bird’s eye view of the leaders of our country and how they maneuver in Washington DC to create their vision of change. Most of all it gave me a new respect for public service in the government and how a ‘small rudder can change the course of a big ship.’ Or, in other words, how the huge ship of government may move slowly but changemakers within the system, when they change the ship’s course, can make a tremendous difference to millions of people.
Courtney Montague
Executive Director GVN Foundation
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