Business and Peace: Conversations with Bobby Sager
by Chris Johnston
Bobby Sager wishes he could pinpoint that magic moment when he knew he was meant to found the Sager Foundation and perform charitable work in Third World countries. But the man behind altruistic initiatives such as the microenterprise loan project in Rwanda claims it was an evolution. "I'd like to say that I was sitting on a mountain somewhere and meditating, but I haven't had any kind of epiphany," he reveals. "This has been a very granular, gradual process for me."
In the late '80s, Sager decided to enter the business world because he believed he would have more control of his destiny. The ability to create choices for himself presented the young entrepreneur with a controllable, effective means to an end, he explains. Eventually, he realized that he wanted to do more to help other people who needed it the most, meaning Third World inhabitants. He founded the Sager Foundation expressly for that mission and began traveling to developing nations such as Nepal, Tibet and Sri Lanka with his wife, Elaine, and their children, Tess and Shane.
When asked, Sager enumerates three reasons why his organization works exclusively in the Third World: One, the money goes a lot farther. Two, the issues are more "vital" and the opportunities more significant; in other words, rather than just making someone's life in the United States better, they can make someone's life in the Third World tolerable. Third, it allows Sager and his family to engage in more hands-on, eyeball-to-eyeball experiences with the people they are trying to help.
The latter reason represents the foundation of Sager's philosophy about charitable work. While donating money is constructive, if that is all the person does, they miss the opportunity to grow through the personal interaction with the people in need and the situations they are trying to improve. In this philosophy of enlightened self-interest, the person giving his time is not making a sacrifice, but rather gaining a powerful life experience.
"In the Third World, my family can have these amazing learning, feeling and problem-solving experiences that are so vital, so intense," he relates. "Us being there and sharing those experiences with the people we are trying to help and having those kinds of growth experiences as individuals and as a family are key drivers in us doing what we do the way we do it."
Implementing this approach to aiding others led the Sagers to traverse Africa, including several visits to turmoil-torn Rwanda. The Sagers visited the country several years after the Hutu genocide of Tutsis in 1994 that left nearly one million people dead in 100 days, killing approximately 50 percent of the Tutsi population, with the majority of the remainder fleeing the country. After experiencing the fallout from the devastation firsthand, Sager decided to initiate a microenterprise program in the country that would alleviate some of the horrific poverty while facilitating reconciliation.
"We do microenterprise projects in different places around the world because we love the concept of very small amounts of money being lent and making an impact," Sager says. "Not just on poverty alleviation, but on social fabric, making better citizens, better parents, better everything. It really seeps into the DNA of the place."
In Rwanda, the microenterprise program primarily partners the wives of men who were murdered in the tragedy into business partnerships with the wives of the 150,000 people imprisoned on accusations that they participated in the genocide. While people applying for loans must have a strong business plan in place, they will only be considered if their plan incorporates a proactive approach to fostering reconciliation. Sager has also created a youth leadership program called Reconciliation Camp that brings together Hutu and Tutsi students before they enter university.
Ultimately, he says, the point is to help people from the opposing sides understand each other at a personal level because they have to interact or work together on a daily basis.
"They start to see that they both have the same kinds of dreams, the same kind of blood, and the same concerns in life," Sager explains. "So the next time the politicians or leaders try to demonize one group to the other group, it's going to be more difficult, because they have firsthand experiences with one another."
In Sager's ideal world, sometime in the not-too-distant future, he hopes, more individuals will stop retreating into their own worlds and feeling powerless to help anyone else. Moreover, he hopes more individuals will realize that regardless of their resources or location, and whether those who need succor are "around the world or around the corner" that they can make a significant difference in the lives of other people.
"My vision would be that people who are engaged, who care about the welfare of others will recognize that they not only make an impact on those people," he concludes. "They are, in the never-ending cycle of birth, death and everything else, going to be better themselves because they care about these people."
© 2004 World Benefit Productions, All Rights Reserved
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