Ripples from the Zambezi: Passion, Entrepreneurship, and the Rebirth of Local Economies

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Summary: Economic development from the bottom up
Review: Ripples from the Zambezi: Passion, Entrepreneurship, and the Rebirth of Local Economies, by Ernesto Sirolli. New Society Publishers, 1999. Review by Peter Donovan ([e-mail]) Many people wish to strengthen their local economies, reduce dependence on multinational corporations, build community by doing things, or achieve self-fulfilment through meaningful work. Yet these results are not coming from the top-down, programmatic, and strategic approaches typically used by governments, economic development bureaucracies, and even by some community groups, nonprofits, and advocacy organizations. As E. F. Schumacher observed in Good Work, we cannot expect to raise the wind that will push us to a better world. What we can do is hoist a sail to catch the wind when it does come. Ripples from the Zambezi tells the gripping story of how Ernesto Sirolli learned to catch the wind of passionate, skillful, creative, intelligent, and self-motivated entrepreneurs-the acknowledged powerhouse of the economy as well as of social change. Sirolli's experiences as a volunteer for the Italian government in Africa during the 1970s convinced him that "development" schemes were anything but. After absorbing Schumacher's Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered and the person-centered psychology of Carl Rogers, Sirolli put his radical, antidogmatic ideas to the test in rural Western Australia. Instead of trying to motivate people, he made himself available as coach and advocate for anyone who was serious about starting or expanding a business enterprise. By treating economic development as a byproduct of personal growth and self-actualization, Sirolli was able to make a quantum leap in the effectiveness of business coaching, as well as create local miracles of economic development. He has devoted himself since to teaching committed civic leaders how to do what he has done. "In every community, no matter how small, remote, or depressed, there is somebody who is scribbling figures on a kitchen table. If we can be available, for free and in confidence, to help that person go from the dream to establish an enterprise that can sustain that person and his or her family, we can begin to change the economic fortunes of the entire community." Sirolli's ideas are not just good. They are inspiring, inflammatory, they resonate-and they are based on 15 colorful years of failing and succeeding at hoisting the sail in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the U.S. The underlying philosophy has to do with empowerment rather than control. "A shift from strategic to responsive development can only occur," Sirolli writes, "if we are capable of believing that people are intrinsically good and that the diversity, variety, and apparent randomness of their passions is like the chaotic yet ecologically sound life manifestations in an old-growth forest." The message is that bottom-up, person-centered, responsive economic development works-and if well understood and led at the community level, it works better than anything else.

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Summary: Book published by progressives champions free enterprise!
Review: Sirolli quotes Tom Peters (!): " The market is frightening, even terrifying. It's not pretty. It's surely irrational, yet over the long haul, the unfettered market works for the most rational of reasons; it produces more experiments, more tries, more wins, more losses, more information processes (market signals) faster than any alternative." This is the system Sirolli champions. In the Foreword to this book, Mark Roseland, direector of the Community Economic Development Centre at Simon Fraser University (Vancouver, BC) describes New Society Publishers as evolving out of concerns about "peacemaking, nonviolence and feminism, later broadening to cover alternative economics, progressive leadership, and educational and parenting titles concerned with raiseding peaceful children." This may be the first and last volume that both Libertarians and Progressives will read and say: "Wow, what a great book!" Part of the miracle may be that Sirolli, an Italian, began his career in development in Africa (disastrously) and Australia (successfully), coming to the U.S. later. Sirolli, unlike most people on the left, is not an elitist. One chapter bears the subtitle "If people don't want to be helped, leave them alone." While Sirolli would go to government organizations looking for bucks to help an entrepreneur off the ground, he states (p. 24) "Contrary to Dante's 'Inferno,' ... my hell wasn't populated by naked gluttons, greedy merchants, and assorted petty sinners. The torturers ... were well-dressed authoritarian figures who, in the name of an idea, would torture and beat the psychological life out of the people in their power. From unyielding bureaucrats to religious fanatics, from political extremists to rabid do-gooders, my demonology started to contain anybody who dreamt up a code of conduct and tried to manipulate or coerce others to follow it." Sirolli is well-read. He explores the thoughts of Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow and A.S. Neill (of Summerhill fame), quotes Peter Drucker (not to mention Confucius, Kahlil Gibran and Goethe!). Robert D. Putnam (Bowling Alone) even gets a mention. But Sirolli is basically a practical man of action trying to help individual entrepreneurs turn their dreams into businesses. This book is about his decent, caring efforts to facilitate grass-roots entrepreneurial capitalists succeed. It is a fascinating and heartening work!