Brittany Boroian is a volunteer for Acumen Fund based in New York. She is a recent graduate of Global College and will be a Class 12 Kiva Fellow in Africa starting July.

Dear Acumen Fund supporters and readers of this blog,

My name is Brittany Boroian, and I have been volunteering with Acumen Fund since January. Today is my final day of working with Acumen Fund, and I wanted to share with you some of the highlights of this amazing experience.

I first became passionate about Acumen Fund by reading The Blue Sweater , which is a phenomenal book on the life of Jacqueline Novogratz , founder and CEO of Acumen Fund. After working with various micro-finance institutions abroad, this was the perfect book for me to read on a new and compelling approach to tackle global poverty. I felt so connected to Jacqueline’s experiences in Africa and India, and believed that market-based solutions that focused on dignity and empowerment were much more effective that traditional aid-driven approaches. When I arrived at New York for my final semester at Global College, I joined Acumen Fund’s online community and reached out to Yasmina Zaidman , Director of Communications at Acumen Fund, for any way that I could help and learn more about the organization.

I came into Acumen Fund with a fear that since The Blue Sweater was such a passionate and enthusiastic book, that the organization wouldn’t be as idealistic as I had imagined. I had such an experience with a former organization I had worked with, and so I expected that Acumen Fund wouldn’t be as visionary or effective as they were portrayed. Fortunately, this was a completely wrong assumption on my part. My respect and awe for Acumen Fund continues to grow with each day, by the astonishing employees that work so hard to carry out Acumen Fund’s vision, by the volunteers who pop in and out of the office doing numerous and unimaginable feats (varying from working on Acumen Fund’s online database to planning Jacqueline Novogratz’s trip to Japan), and by learning more about Acumen Fund’s investments that really work. I also had the opportunity to become involved in New York for Acumen’s *spark! benefit, which was organized by an incredible group of volunteers who are all extremely dedicated to Acumen Fund’s mission. I felt very proud to be part of this exciting community of people who are all working together to make the world a better place.

I think that the peak of my respect for Acumen Fund occurred during a trip to the Global Health Unite for Sight conference at Yale in mid-April, which featured over 200 leaders on global health and social enterprise, including Jacqueline Novogratz as a keynote speaker. I came to the conference excited, and expecting to learn of 200 more organizations that were doing work just like Acumen Fund. I was wrong in this assumption. Nearly every speaker I listened to lectured the audience on the many problems in global health, and that their organization needed X amount of money to fix it (many without mentioning how they would fix it). But when Jacqueline Novogratz stepped up to the podium, her speech was about the solutions Acumen Fund has been working on to tackle global poverty. I think this is a fundamental difference between Acumen Fund and many other organizations, and I left the conference astounded that I could feel even more awe and respect for their methods to alleviate poverty.

While I leave Acumen Fund with a sense of sadness because my incredible volunteership has ended, I know that this is only the beginning. Microfinance was the spark that pushed me into the field of social entrepreneurship, but I’ve learnt at Acumen Fund that there are many other ways of addressing the problem of poverty. Acumen Fund’s approach of leveraging Patient Capital to combat global poverty is the fuel that feeds a now roaring fire within me. I know that wherever these next steps in my life will take me, I will always bring Acumen Fund along with me, whether it’s preaching stories from The Blue Sweater to whoever will listen, remaining actively engaged on their incredible online community, or being a part of Acumen Fund’s chapters wherever I may end up. One of Acumen Fund’s mission statements is to inspire the next generation to taking action. I feel inspired.

I leave Acumen Fund with immeasurable respect for their organization, enormous passion for the field of social enterprise, and an immense desire to work for them in the future.

Thank you for such an incredible opportunity, Acumen Fund.

To everyone out there who has been wondering if and how you can get involved in Acumen Fund’s work, I strongly encourage you to take action. We have to be the change we want to see in our world. Read The Blue Sweater , explore our Volunteer page, or to reach out to the Acumen Fund team if you have a specific idea in mind! If my volunteer experience was anything to go by, this is a decision you won’t regret!

Best Wishes,

Brittany Boroian

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This entry was posted on Monday, May 10th, 2010 at 9:00 am and is filed under AF Team, Acumen Community, Acumen News, Talent. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.