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Christina Jordan
Nov 29, 2006
Something out of Nothing
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If they made baseball cards for social entrepreneurs, I'd want a Jordan rookie.
I haven't really written much about our trip to East Africa in October for the Frontline taping. That's probably because it's pretty difficult to describe what the time meant for me and impo'ssible to capture the vibrancy of the people I met. This post will probably suffer because of that, but I'm giving it a shot anyway.
Something I have loved since starting this job is being connected to a greater community of entrepreneurs. Christina Jordan, who runs Life in Africa (LiA) , made a lasting impression on me and what I'm trying to accomplish with Kiva.
As I mentioned before, LiA is a cooperative owned by mostly women who produce crafts and run small businesses -- like Grace's Peanut Butter Factory. They make business decisions by consensus and loan applications are approved by the community at large. This leads to lively town meetings where applicants are evaluated in front of everyone and dirty laundry is often aired. Because of the community feel, stepping into LiA grounds is somewhat utopian. You can viscerally feel the energy when walking in -- both our entrance and departure were accompanied with Acholi song and dance. I became a stiff drummer in a circle of not so stiff women.
There was a lot of down time during the taping, so were able to catch up with Christina. One thing I detected from her is a maverick, anti-establishment, yet capitalist attitude. As far as I can tell, LiA has received little or no funding from foundations. Instead, they have built a self-sustaining community and turned a profit from selling crafts made from paper, plastic bags and drinking straws. In some of the most desolate areas on earth LiA has started to build something permanent..."out of nothing" she pointed out. Hearing her say that in a prideful way was a call to action for me.
Many of us, when starting an organization, can fall into the permission trap. There are a series of steps you can traditionally take to get a social enterprise, or any venture, off the ground. There are seminars, conferences, incubators, fellowships and foundations. This leads to trap that is easy to fall into: the process of asking for permission to be an entrepreneur can be inherently anti-entrepreneurial.
At the dawn of Kiva, most of this process didn't work for me. Instead, choosing to build every day has been my saving grace. The road has been bumpy, but it's much more rewarding to focus on building than to worry what various committees of people are thinking of your business at any given time. I have tried to focus every day on what we can control and double down on that -- and let the rest play out with the passage of time.
I haven't really written much about our trip to East Africa in October for the Frontline taping. That's probably because it's pretty difficult to describe what the time meant for me and impo'ssible to capture the vibrancy of the people I met. This post will probably suffer because of that, but I'm giving it a shot anyway.
Something I have loved since starting this job is being connected to a greater community of entrepreneurs. Christina Jordan, who runs Life in Africa (LiA) , made a lasting impression on me and what I'm trying to accomplish with Kiva.
As I mentioned before, LiA is a cooperative owned by mostly women who produce crafts and run small businesses -- like Grace's Peanut Butter Factory. They make business decisions by consensus and loan applications are approved by the community at large. This leads to lively town meetings where applicants are evaluated in front of everyone and dirty laundry is often aired. Because of the community feel, stepping into LiA grounds is somewhat utopian. You can viscerally feel the energy when walking in -- both our entrance and departure were accompanied with Acholi song and dance. I became a stiff drummer in a circle of not so stiff women.
There was a lot of down time during the taping, so were able to catch up with Christina. One thing I detected from her is a maverick, anti-establishment, yet capitalist attitude. As far as I can tell, LiA has received little or no funding from foundations. Instead, they have built a self-sustaining community and turned a profit from selling crafts made from paper, plastic bags and drinking straws. In some of the most desolate areas on earth LiA has started to build something permanent..."out of nothing" she pointed out. Hearing her say that in a prideful way was a call to action for me.
Many of us, when starting an organization, can fall into the permission trap. There are a series of steps you can traditionally take to get a social enterprise, or any venture, off the ground. There are seminars, conferences, incubators, fellowships and foundations. This leads to trap that is easy to fall into: the process of asking for permission to be an entrepreneur can be inherently anti-entrepreneurial.
At the dawn of Kiva, most of this process didn't work for me. Instead, choosing to build every day has been my saving grace. The road has been bumpy, but it's much more rewarding to focus on building than to worry what various committees of people are thinking of your business at any given time. I have tried to focus every day on what we can control and double down on that -- and let the rest play out with the passage of time.
