Portrait of a Social Entrepreneur: Artistri Sud’s Jennifer Lonergan
This piece was written by our summer intern Lena Bergunde for McGill’s Social Impact Internship program, which she was a part of.
Jennifer Lonergan didn’t know that she was going to be a social entrepreneur growing up. She didn’t know it when she graduated from university with a PhD in women’s history. She was a historian and a teacher for 15 years, but today she is a social entrepreneur; the founder and executive director of the Montreal-based nonprofit Artistri Sud, which works to empower women in the developing world through entrepreneurship training.
So if launching a nonprofit was never the plan, how did Lonergan end up doing it? It was a survival move. “I had what many would call a dream job. I was being paid well. I had a beautiful house, great friends, and meaningful relationships. But I was dissatisfied. I wasn’t happy and I couldn’t explain it because the optics of it all seemed so good.” The growing dissatisfaction with her own life was part of the equation that led her to quit her job and launch Artistri Sud. The other factor was directly witnessing the conditions that so many women in the developing world live in. She realized that other women don’t have the same opportunities we so often take for granted. She knew something needed to be done and she also knew that at that moment she wasn’t doing anything to help. Inspired by her best friend’s father who had started a school in a small village in India, she decided that she too could make a difference. The need for change was evident and Lonergan felt she could do something to address it. “Just because you’re only helping a seemingly small group of people, that shouldn’t be an excuse to do nothing.”
And so the dissatisfaction with her life back in Canada collided with the realization that she could have a positive impact and truly change other people’s lives. Months of research, meetings and exploring her options followed. She sought for a way to combine her interests and skills and use them to address the problem she had encountered. “I had always been interested in how the ideas and the practice around women’s roles in societies change throughout time. It’s been somewhat of a recurring theme throughout my life”, says Lonergan, who holds a PhD in women’s history. She wanted to affect change in what women are recognized for and the roles they play. Put simply, she wanted to show what women are capable of and help them have a chance to know it for themselves.
“When women have confidence, a network of friends, when they make money — that’s when they begin to exert influence. And the impact is so great. Empowered women change the lives of everyone around them. They have an incredible effect.” On her 3rd trip to India, Lonergan did a study of women’s self-help groups — groups of women that help and support each other. One woman was working as a seamstress in a small coop. After 9 years she had finally saved up enough money to buy a house and moved with her three children. But her husband refused. He wouldn’t live in a house owned by a woman and certainly not his wife. He pressured her to sign over the house to him — but she refused. “Women in developing countries don’t usually stand up to men, but she could because she had the money and she had the friends in her group that supported her.” In the end her husband moved in. “I met so many wonderful women. But this story really stood out to me. It’s so powerful because it perfectly demonstrates just how much of a difference it makes if these women are empowered and financially independent.”
It was clear to Lonergan then, that a way to help these women already existed. She just had to figure out how to support and improve the process to make it even more impactful and effective. Being paid was an important factor. In developing countries, even more so than elsewhere, much of the work women do goes unrecognized. The things they create aren’t paid for, so aren’t valued. “Until these women are able to monetize what they do and create, their situation will never change.” Today, Artistri Sud works to empower women so that their products and they themselves are valued. Artistri Sud takes an educational empowerment approach, giving the women entrepreneurship training that provides them with skills, resources and knowledge they need to grow and successfully run their micro-enterprises and sell their products. The women are able to run a business and earn a living by selling what they created — and the financial independence and sense of empowerment that comes from this has innumerous benefits for the women and their families, and ultimately well beyond.
Empowering women is Artistri Sud’s main goal. But the approach employed by Lonergan — empowering women artisans to earn a sustainable income by selling the products they already make themselves — does even more. It preserves cultural craft traditions. “In the history of craft, men always gravitated towards dangerous crafts such as welding, metal or wood work. Women did the things that were less dangerous, such as weaving and textiles, and easier to drop mid-stream. That way they could still fulfill their duties of taking care of the children without exposing them to danger.” Unfortunately, women’s craft skills, like so much else they do, have become devalued over time. But wrongly so. The importance of textiles, for example, shouldn’t be underestimated. They protect us from the elements, they cover and warm our bodies and in nomadic cultures, textiles are used to build and warm homes. “People today act like it’s nothing, but in fact it’s a big deal”, says Lonergan. With the devaluation of women’s work, craft skills are being lost. “That’s a lot of know-how, skill and tradition that is disappearing.” This too was one of the thoughts behind the organization’s founding. If there is no market for craft — the things people make with their own hands — then all that cultural knowledge will die and the skills and tradition will be lost. So Artistri Sud combines its entrepreneurship training with the women’s existing craft skills, the former complementing the latter, and the end result is the empowerment of women and a simultaneous maintenance of their cultural tradition.
A better world is possible. Empowered women can make it happen. That is Artistri Sud’s slogan and the belief behind everything Lonergan does. “The women we work with are the have-nots of the have-nots, the poorest, most marginalized people in the world. They live in the most dire conditions.” This made it an easy choice for Lonergan to focus her work on helping them. Women do around 70% of the world’s work but own only 1% of the world’s land. They put in so much every day and get so little in return. She notes that not only is the need to help women greatest, but the impact is even greater. The multiplier effect of empowering women is increasingly well documented. When women are empowered their children, families and communities benefit. “The impact you have is so huge. The social returns of investing in women are so much greater than when investing in men.” Artistri Sud today
Today Artistri Sud successfully implements entrepreneurship trainings in countries such as Bolivia and Chile. This year a new program, Train-the-Trainer, is being piloted — the women who graduated from the entrepreneurship program get the chance to become teachers and pass on the newly acquired knowledge and skills to other women in their communities. This is a big step for the program’s sustainability and long-term impact. But don’t think for a second that Lonergan’s journey has been free of challenges and bumps in the road — because what journey ever is? “In the beginning everything was a challenge. I had no idea what I was doing.” Lonergan was familiar with running a small business; her family owned one and she had previously run a tourist business in Greece, and a social enterprise retail store. “Small business was in my circle of reference. But I didn’t know anything about nonprofits when I launched Artistri Sud. I didn’t know how to run it, how to finance it, how to build and grow the organization.” While others might have been discouraged by the rocky and challenging start, that was never an option for Lonergan. ‘Why did you keep going when it was difficult?’ That’s a question Lonergan often gets, and her response perfectly shows that she’s doing exactly what she’s meant to be doing. “I think it matters. It needs to be done.” That isn’t to say that Lonergan never felt discouraged or overwhelmed. “I was terrified”, she admits. “After all, you have to make a living and put a roof over your head. There were times when I asked myself: How am I going to live?” But she’s come to realize that people can live with so much less and she knows that while she may live a more modest life than others, she still has a lot to be grateful for.
Lonergan has done what she set out to do — she’s changed the lives of numerous women through her entrepreneurship training programs. But this is just the start. Currently, Lonergan is trying to figure out how to scale the program and maximize its impact. “We have a program that works really well in generating income for a certain segment of the marginalized and impoverished world. And participating in the program is life changing for these women,” says Lonergan. Her dream is to roll out the programs globally wherever women suffer from poverty and marginalization, so the maximum number of women are receiving support. Lonergan hopes to reduce intervention on Artistri Sud’s part — she wants to reach a point where the program is self-sustaining within 3–4 years after the first implementation in a given region. “We’re looking into how we can get the program implementation to be more localized and self-run; how women on the ground can find the resources, funding and partners to carry out the program themselves, but still have the same impact.” The Train-the-Trainer program launching in November 2016 is one step towards this goal. It looks to train recent program graduates to be entrepreneurship trainers and leaders of the program for a new group of women. With Lonergan’s track-record, this will be another challenge she’ll tackle successfully, incorporating lessons learned and input from the women themselves.
Lonergan has mastered the art of doing what you love. She dared to take a risk, changed her life and is a happier person with a job she loves. So what is the best thing about running Artistri Sud? “I get to feel that what I do with my life is important. Most people don’t feel that way — it’s a gift. I feel that what I can do for someone actually matters, that my work has an impact. It changes lives.” Artistri Sud is entirely volunteer-based and Lonergan loves the fact that she gets to work with so many like-minded individuals. The fact that everyone is trying to accomplish meaningful change makes the work even more fun and fulfilling. Lonergan has come a long way from when she started Artistri Sud knowing nothing about running a nonprofit. And the learning never stops. “I never feel like I’ve completely got this, there’s always an opportunity to learn and grow. Every minute.”
After years of experience, Lonergan’s piece of advice, which her father gave to her and she often ignored herself, is to learn and gain the experience you need while working for someone else and then start your own venture. And don’t let society’s constant obsession with perfection stand in your way. “You will always think you can’t do something unless you try. Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.”
