How big is your world?
Is everything okay?
Well, do you mean in my house? My neighborhood? The home office of my company? The entire industry?
Thanks to airplanes, television and the internet, the scope of our experience continues to widen. Now, we're concerned about wildfires in Australia or failing banks in the UK. Now, we celebrate when conjoined twins are saved a few continents away, and join in the search for a missing adventurer in a place we've never been.
But, there's a difference between being aware of the emergency of the day and having firsthand experience and firsthand empathy for different people in different places.
My friend Jacqueline Novogratz, founder of the Acumen Fund, is at the forefront of making the world smaller. She has the unique ability to combine the financial and the spiritual in a way that does justice to both.
Her new book, The Blue Sweater, publishes in the United States this week. It's the work of a passionate amateur, an honest memoir of someone who has lived a life most of us can only dream of. When you read of Jacqueline's experiences as a naive banker newly arrived in Africa, or her extraordinary efforts to connect people of similar spirit but different cultures, you can't help but become emotionally involved in the positive energy that's spreading everywhere.
It may seem like this book has little to do with what I write about all day, or what you focus on in your work, but nothing could be further from the truth. No matter what you do, the smaller world is coming to your doorstep. No matter how you spend your day, the living, breathing, interacting big world is going to touch your private one.
An anonymous donor has put up $75,000 in a matching grant–if you buy the book this week, $15 will be donated to Acumen (for each of the first 5,000 copies sold). I hope you'll take advantage and order a copy today. Thanks.
UPDATE: The book is officially a New York Times bestseller. Thank you. It means a lot that you helped spread the word.