I don’t know about you, but I am so jealous of my son. He has been such an inspiration to me — to the point of total envy.

I am used to being the center of attention, with all the work I’ve done over the years building an organization that takes partially used bars of soap from hotels and recycles them into new bars. With the Global Soap Project, I have earned a reputation of doing good around the world, and for that I am proud as well as humbled. But I am also used to being the center of the universe. For example, every single day I get an email or a Facebook “like” or a kind, encouraging statement from friends around the world that really appreciate the work we have done at Global Soap Project. But someone has been filling in daddy’s shoes slowly but steadily, and it has caught my attention.

My son Kevin just turned 13 in February. At this young age he has a trajectory of success that is starting to not only impress me, but also make me envious of his accomplishments. At his age I was nowhere in comparison.

You see, at 13 Kevin is a prolific piano player, partly because he wakes up every morning at 7 a.m. — without fail — to play for 30 minutes.

Kevin decided to take his SATs at just 12 years old and actually scored a 1200. Duke University’s TIPS program, where Kevin has enrolled for their summer honors program, tells me this isn’t bad for a 12-year-old. (I say that because I attended the British system of education, so I really don’t understand how it works in the U.S. when it comes to SATs.)

And to add insult to injury, Kevin stands at 6’1” with a size-15 shoe and is a brilliant basketball player. He didn’t show any promise at first, hardly getting any game time during his first year on his basketball team. But over time, in true Kevin fashion, he got into the game: he studied it every single day on his iPad and through magazines and played it relentlessly on video games. He’s learned not only the art form of playing basketball but knows the strengths and weakness of every key player that has graduated to the NBA from college. He also goes to the gym five days a week to train. Today I am proud to say Kevin is a starter on his team and has won a few championships locally. His coach tells me that if he stays the course, he is bound for not just college basketball but also potentially the NBA — a noble goal that eludes many wonderfully gifted kids.

I once thought I was a great athlete. I played soccer for my college team and table tennis and was relatively good. But no coach said or even thought I was professional material!

With all of this, Kevin is also just a good kid. He is very kind-hearted — something I never was at that age. He particularly loves his baby sister and actually takes the time to play with her. Most boys don’t tend to have that sort of affinity for their sisters; in fact, some tend to tease them a bit.

For Kevin, discipline is a virtue, and his self-motivation and tasks are taken seriously and executed with precision. I don’t know where he got this sense of focus (well, I should be careful saying that because my wife always reminds me where that focus comes from … hint hint!), but it makes me wonder about myself. Could I be even more successful if I had the focus Kevin has?

Recently I’ve been trying to answer that question. I’ve been trying to emulate my son. I enrolled back into school, a tough school at that. But I am pleasantly sad to say that I am not in any way as composed, or focused, or motivated as my son. What a sad day in my life to realize this for me, but what a wonderful day to know that I have provided a milieu that affords Kevin the elusive opportunity to perfect his life and create what I pray and hope will be a fantastic life — a gem to give the world, in my view.

I can only end this by saying I am “envious” of you Kevin — and proud to be. To my fellow parents who struggle with this in another form (maybe you have a grown-up child who is doing what you did but better, or is making more money than you): Don’t fret. At the end of the day, as parents we are our children’s nexus to the talents and skills they possess genetically. So take heart: their success is your success.

The only question remaining is, did my wife and I do anything special to raise a child of this caliber? That is yet to be answered … the struggle continues.

Yours truly,
A humbled father

As we come to the end of February, I wanted to reflect on its importance as Black History Month. Not many of us really appreciate the importance of this month: It’s supposed to be a time of self-reflection, especially on the incredible contributions of the African-American community to these great United States of America.

First, let’s consider where this tradition came from: In 1915, Dr. Carter G. Woodson founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, now known as the Association for the Study of African American Life and History. The Association conceived the idea of “Negro History Week,” which was first celebrated during a week in February 1926 that encompassed the birthdays of both Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. Fifty years later, President Gerald Ford expanded the celebration to a month.

As I reflected on the milestones in racial equality that the people of the United States have, I couldn’t help but think about the still-gaping stumbling blocks that face African Americans — women in particular. In 2000, the Bureau of Justice Statistics reported that African-American women experienced domestic violence at a rate 35% higher than their Caucasian counterparts. According to an ongoing study from Black Women’s Blueprint, 60% of black girls report experiencing sexual assault before age 18.

While the aforementioned facts are disquieting, I was pleased to have recently run into the most amazing woman fighting these realities in the African-American community.

Meet Ms. Alma Davis. Alma, herself an African American, was a victim of abuse at an early age all the way into her marriage. One thing she was never able to get away from was the sense of abandonment and neglect that she carried throughout her life. Alma suffered through this time with great dignity and was eventually able to come to terms with it, at which point she decided to turn that grief into a mission to help young women going through a similar struggle.

Ms. Alma Davis (right) was a victim of abuse at an early age. She has since turned her grief into a mission to help young women who have similar struggles.

Alma started an NGO called AIM for Youth, an organization that brings kids in need together with professional athletes, entertainers, and civil leaders. While this was a program to groom youth leadership, Alma felt something was missing. So one day she got a vision to start “Dinner for Divas!”

“Dinner for Divas” is an all-day event organized to take women and young girls who are victims of abuse to a special dinner where they are celebrated for who they are. What is charming about this event is that the women and girls don’t usually know why they are being pampered. They usually think they are going out to a small nice event and that’s it. Once they arrive and get their hair and makeup done, then styled and dressed in formal attire, they start to suspect something special is going on. Once they arrive at the dinner, they realize there are more than two hundred other women and young girls like them, all dressed to the nines! Then they all get into this massive ballroom where they are celebrated for who they are and reminded that the abuse they have faced over the years doesn’t define who they are as females or as human beings.

Then the tears start to run down their cheeks because for the first time in their lives they are the center of attention and being valued for who they are. You see, some of these girls have been sex-trafficked, some have been raped, others have been torn down and beaten all their lives and told they will never amount to anything. Yet during this dinner, a new world is opened up to them. A world where as women and girls they are told they matter!

I must tell you as a former refugee and victim of senseless war during Idi Amin’s era, there is nothing as important to one’s survival during and after the abuse like someone reassuring you of your humanness and value. When a woman is raped and assaulted in all forms, sometimes a reassuring gesture to show her that she is not going through this alone can be the most promising and hopeful thing you can ever afford her. I am glad to say “Dinner for Divas” is doing exactly that for these women and young girls.

During my first meeting with Alma she was despondent, and fretted the looming and constant thought of inadequacy. Even after having done so much to help herself and others, she still felt a bit unloved. I told her that what she was feeling was the emotion of not being loved — just like all the women and girls she was about to show love were feeling. I reminded her that as their spirits screamed out into the universe for help, Alma was the only one who could hear that cry because she had been there and could recognize that sentiment of fear and the lack of love that each one of these women and girls was feeling. And so it is in all our lives. The universe ushers us into these dark places and then pulls some of us out to go organize resources so as to go back into the belly of the beast to claim those victims out of these doldrums.

As we conclude Black History Month I am proud to say that even though the stats don’t look great, there are women like Alma who are bent on reversing these negatives. The question then becomes what can the rest of us do to encourage women like Alma in their work to do good. On my end as a man who is part of a brotherhood that is sometimes responsible for bringing this sort of pain, I chose to write about Alma and to encourage her to continue doing good. In addition, I promised to get the word out about “Dinner for Divas.” For more about this motivating story please visit Alma’s website, and get inspired!

In this talk from TEDWomen 2010, Madeleine Albright (who I have had the pleasure to meet) stresses that it’s paramount for the progress of the world that women help women.

There is no question that there are a lot of successful girls and women in the world, but the thing I want to ask is: Are they using their success to help others? Perhaps more importantly, are they using their power to change the lives of girls around the world, especially ones that struggle with oppression? The short answer is some are, and some aren’t. I bring up the issue of women simply because they are said to be gaining more power especially at home in the work place as well as in politics globally. Consider the power of women at home for instance. According to this 2011 Wall Street Journal article, women control about 80% of spending on consumer products.

I think it’s important to ask the above question and to particularly challenge each other to discover our life’s purpose, especially if the god of success has visited us. To whom much is given, much is expected!

As we enter a New Year, this question is on my mind more than ever. In past posts, I have talked about the world in which many women and girls live. From the recent gang rape in Ohio and Delhi, India that killed a woman, to the shooting of Malala Yousufzai, the 15-year-old girl in Pakistan whose only crime was to champion education for young girls. When in actual fact what she was doing was using her chivalrous personality to champion a human right and willing to actually die for it.

We should see her — a girl who was able to be brave and stand up for her beliefs even in the face of extreme obstacles — as a role model, especially when looking at the potential contribution that can be made by those girls and women who have been fortunate enough to grow up in a world of peace and blessings, be it financial or other. If you are one of them, my question to you this time around is how you perceive the world around you?

Are you invested in bettering the human condition? Or do you think someone else is responsible for its repair? Well, a quick answer here is no, you are not to wait around and rest on your laurels for admiration by others, rather, you are to use them as the very vessel through which the universe intends to heal the world! With your talents and skills, you are the one person who can do something about the ills of the human condition. Put aside any self-consciousness or apathy you may feel in order to take on the ultimate challenge of service to humankind. You know why, because it adds ecstasy to oneself.

Why am I so passionate about this? Because serving others will make you feel better about yourself. Giving back to humankind is said to heal the soul. In fact, psychologists have long speculated of the value of philanthropy as well as service.

So how do you use success to change the world?

First some quotes. Mother Teresa once said, “Let us not be satisfied with just giving money. Money is not enough, money can be got, but they need your hearts to love them. So, spread your love everywhere you go.” Need another one? Maya Angelou echoed a similar thought: “I have found that among its other benefits, giving liberates the soul of the giver.”

Most of us connect giving with money, and we see it as an expense we cannot afford. We forget too easily that money is not the only form of giving back to humanity. Rather as Mother Teresa posits, your passion to solve humankind’s problems is really the real form and description of success.

I challenge each one of you to find a passion and purpose in your life and use your skillset to give back. This will quintessentially define your success to others and to yourself. Don’t sit back and wait for someone else to intervene when you could. Not using your success, be it influence on the political scale, in the corporate world, at your church, school board, or as a village elder, is withholding a special gift from the world.

To illustrate this point, I have a short story to tell about a successful girl whom I see use her success to bring women’s issues to the forefront and better the world with her help.

In trying to understand the potential of women, my very good girl-friend and I (and she is just that for those of you who were wondering!) and executive at Babble, traveled with CARE USA to Africa to see the benefit of empowering women there. On a flight to the embattled northern Uganda (a place ravaged by Joseph Kony), we talked about the excitement of telling the story of CARE’s work to our friends.

When we got to northern Uganda, we witnessed both the ravages of war and the impact it had on women there. From rape victims to widows, the scenes we saw filled us with sorrow. But we also saw what the help of others did to change the lives of these women. With a small loan of just $50 -100, these women were starting small businesses and actually paying back their loans on time — something that I always have a problem doing as a new American! After the trip, we came back to the USA rejuvenated and ready to use our skillsets for the greatest impact in these women’s lives. I vowed to write about the plight of women as well as the success of women through the lens of a humble man, while my executive friend at Babble vowed to give both me and CARE a platform to voice the plight of these women around the world who suffer from institutional oppression.

So you see, you can use your skills and tool kits to influence the world around you. Find a cause this year and be its champion. You have the power to bring about change — try it this new year and I can guarantee you, your life will never be the same.

In the wake of Domestic Violence Awareness month in October, I am harshly reminded of the recent Taliban shooting of Malala Yousufzai, the 15-year-old girl in Pakistan whose only crime was to champion education for young girls. To her gallant credit and “sheroism,” she survived a bullet wound to the head and is expected to fully recover, according to her doctors.

While Yousufzai’s wound was an act of violence from an outside group, what happened to this young girl in Pakistan happens to girls and women around the world every day in their homes. In an effort to deny these women rights through aggression and violence, their abusers hope that they will prevent them from feeling empowered and self-actualizing.

Their abusers also know that if they allow women and girls their rights, these girls and women would be able to handle the pressure of success equal to, or better than, them, throwing off the balance that keeps abusers in power. It’s important at this time to acknowledge that not all men are abusers. Some of us really do understand the value of women in our lives as nurturers and bearers of life. They are our sisters, mothers, daughters, wives and aunts. The idea of abusing these important people in our lives is the most spineless act that a man could ever embark on. One way that we as a society are abusive towards women is through the lack of funding for education. While in the U.S.A. most girls have access to education, global access to education for young women can be difficult due to cultural norms or a straightforward lack of funding.

Why is education important for girls? Because if we want them to handle business success they need it as a tool, just like boys have it as a tool. Consider this: According to the UN, women account for two-thirds of the world’s 774 million illiterate people. Nobel Laureate Nadine Gordimer has stated, “Illiteracy is poverty of the intellect.” So you can see that education can actually help women improve their lives by simply having smaller families, which in turn helps them afford to work outside the home and thereby provide for their children. And on a bigger level, it’s understood that once women get bigger families, all of us end up paying for those large families. Here in the U.S.A. we know that teenage mothers end up not going to school because they have to drop out — about 70% of teenage mothers do so. A bright side of this statistic is that the dropout rates of teen girls is on the decline, due to increased access to contraceptives and better sex education.

So what am I, as a man, doing to reverse this trend in my own life? This question might sound foolish and even demeaning at first glance, but if you are a girl or a woman it actually isn’t. By now, one would think that this question of girls being able to handle success and the steps needed to attain success have been settled, given that we are in the 21^st century. Unfortunately, this isn’t the case. As I mentioned in my last blog, women are still treated as second-class citizens in the workplace given how they are paid — or I should say, not paid. Globally, girls are faced with the incredible challenge of still having to fight for the tools one needs to participate fully in a global market economy. Tools like education still tend to be a point of contention. Without these tools it’s easy for women and girls to be subjugated by their abusive husbands or relatives because they fear leaving due to poverty and a lack of their own resources to escape.

But I think the real reason is because we, as men, have failed to understand that marginalizing women and keeping them out of our equation of success in a fully functional society is to our own detriment. More educated citizens in our workplaces and communities can only help us grow.

My part as a father has been to give my daughter Lauren the same tasks that I give to my son, Kevin. Kevin started playing piano at the age of seven and so did Lauren. I expect both of them to give me the same results. I expect Kevin to perform very well at school and I expect the same from Lauren.

I have honestly found that with all the tasks that have been equally allocated to my children, both of them have stepped up to the plate and delivered. My daughter can handle the pressure of achievement and failure in the same way that my son can. They are totally equal in their achievements aside from their natural gifts. What does this tell us? I have a simple notion: When you deny your daughter the tools of life, you deny the nation, and indeed the world, the privilege of total success. The economy slumps because half of your populous is illiterate, abused, and underpaid which means the households they belong to are unable to fully function in the marketplace — all because of gender biases that lack sense.

During this critical moment, I would kindly suggest that every man out there give a woman or girl the same opportunity they would give to their fellow man. I have found that women and girls don’t need favors per se, rather simple fairness. For the girls out there, when you get the opportunity, please prove the naysayers wrong!

Next time, I will talk about the power of a successful girl and what she can do to change the world.

In the past few posts I have talked about the influence that women have had on my life, and the impact that influence has had on my approach to business. Recently a thought crossed my mind that caught my attention. What about my daughter — she is a woman in my life, isn’t she? How come I hadn’t given thought to her as an influencer?

Perhaps she hasn’t influenced me in the same way other women have, but she’s had an impact on me nonetheless. How do I, and can I, influence my daughter’s life with the same wisdom I have learned over the years? How do I share with her the strength and character of these forerunners in my life without my ego getting in the way? I don’t know if I should leave it to her mom and just stick with being the loving Dad that disciplines and admonishes where needed.

As I struggled with that thought, I discovered that there was something more insidious about this idea than I had realized. The reason I had this question in my mind in the first place was because I was thinking seriously as to how to guide and groom my son to take over my businesses once I hang up my entrepreneur boots. After all, I figured, as a boy and my first-born child, he is the logical heir! Huh. How did Kevin immediately become the heir therefore the automatic owner of the business, while I leave Lauren behind? I quickly realized that culture was at play.

Most of you know by now I am Ugandan and therefore very “African” in my orientation when it comes to institutional beliefs. In my culture, even though I was raised by these two powerful women, Margie (the American missionary from Pittsburgh) and my biological mother Miriam Kayongo, I still have and had been influenced by a culture that favors boys way too much. I don’t think this is just an African cultural foible alone, because I have seen it in so many other cultures all over the world, including American culture. Because of this, it is natural for me to think in terms of boys being the leaders over girls based on how society views them.

But wait a minute, I ask myself, wasn’t the whole point of me being raised by women to mature and naturally be balanced and carry no bias towards women? I knew this was one to sit down and have a long conversation with myself over. In fact I started to read about gender and run into an article that had the following hypothesis: “the most striking finding in the study of gender is that in most areas the similarities between girls and boys far outweigh the differences.”

In my experience, it’s true that when fathers with sons and daughters become successful entrepreneurs, that they raise expectations for the boys and somehow lower them for the girls. This notion is very tone deaf and can be damaging to the girls. Even after the women and men have grown up, the story doesn’t change: we still pay women less than men for the same qualifications and work! There is nothing more telling than that. According to the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, “Women are almost half of the workforce. They are the equal, if not main, breadwinners in four out of ten families. They receive more college and graduate degrees than men. Yet, on average, women continue to earn considerably less than men. In 2010, female full-time workers made only 77 cents for every dollar earned by men, a gender wage gap of 23 percent. Women, on average, earn less than men in virtually every single occupation.

So what are my digressions against my own daughter? I then remembered that I had taken Kevin to my companies’ board meetings so he can see how business is run and learn about board etiquette, just like my father did with me. I would take Kevin to my speaking engagements so he can see how important being a leader is, just like my father had taken me to political campaigns as a Member of Parliament speaking to his constituents, hoping that Kevin would see how he should act when he takes over the reins. All the while, Lauren was left behind with mom.

This came to me as a surprise because I consider myself very much pro-girl power, yet as I thought through my natural inclinations as a father, I was sort of soft when it came to Lauren, and accepted the fact that she didn’t really have to be that much of a super star, like I expected Kevin to be. Wow, is this who I really I am? I immediately realized that the real lesson that I had sort of missed all this time was that the teaching that my mother and Marge had tried to impart on me.

So I decided to start thinking about my daughter as a partial owner of our business, not as a platitude to placate my stupid cultural sentiments, but to really develop a plan to get Lauren groomed for success in business just like I had developed a real plan to get Kevin groomed for success.

While all parents may dream about our daughters as loving, yet helpless, little princesses, the truth is they grow up and, from what I understand, are really tigers when it comes to doing everything that boys do, sometimes even better. But this can never come to fruition if, worldwide, we continue to see girls as second-class citizens. Our notions of women — beginning with my own — must be reprogrammed to seeing them as first-class citizens and equals who can do way more than we have ever imagined.

So in the next couple of blogs I am going to speak about the five keys of raising a girl into a successful woman by her entrepreneur father. The first key we shall look at is “Can girls handle it?” Stay tuned.

Until now I have talked about women who have brought me enormous joy and in a final sense, success, because of what they instilled in me. In my first blog post for Babble, I wrote about my mother’s elegant ability to use clothing as a form of language, a language that if you perfected could usher you into the receiving arms of success. Looking the part was key to her, and it’s something I always strive to do (as those who know me can attest).

In my second post, I spoke about Marge Campbell, the missionary from Pittsburgh who helped raise me during a difficult time. My family and I were refugees, feeling sorry for ourselves and wondering whether the world had come to a hold. But Marge’s whole worldview was to never feel sorry for yourself.  She believed that life breeds events, which can be sad or beautiful, and that each of those experiences adds to your “toolbox” for survival. In other words, each experience in your life possesses a secret medicinal ingredient that you will need to solve a problem in the future. For example, earthquakes are a huge shock to both the world in which they occur and also to the inhabitants. But while they are destructive and can’t necessarily be stopped, we as humans can learn a great deal from them. We can improve the construction of our buildings and discover new technologies that help us get through other shocks like high winds and hurricanes. Similarly, what I learned from Marge was that you could take these big human catastrophes, like being a former refugee, and learn how to cope so that you don’t totally give up on life when it gets challenging. She is how I came up with the saying: “Never underestimate the power of your failures to inform the future of your success.”

And if you remember from my latest post, Vicki, vice president of the InterContinental Hotel Group, taught me how to articulate my vision for the Global Soap Project and convince others to get on board. She taught me the importance of the two P’s: Preparation and Presentation.

I remember when one of our potential donors for the GSP was scheduled to visit, Vicki had us take a Saturday to clean up the headquarters. Her point was that we were not going to get that donor’s interest or investment if we looked unprepared. And sure enough, by the time the donor showed up, the factory was immaculate and we got the start-up capital we needed.

All of these women have been essential in my life, but there’s one woman I have not written about yet, and that’s my redoubtable wife, Sarah. She and I co-founded the GSP under so much duress. As most of you know who are married, spouses know so much about us that sometimes there is no wiggle room for platitudes or procrastination. They are what I call a beautiful thorn in the ass, if there is such a thing. They are why we learn how to live through a storm, an earthquake and paradise — all at the same time. They know when we are not serious about things we promise to do, and unfortunately, they are the ones who suffer through all the ebbs and flows of our dreams.

Sarah’s redoubtable role:

When I had to travel from South Carolina to Tennessee to pick up soap on the weekends, Sarah stayed home to take care of our two beautiful children, Lauren and Kevin. She made sure that they were fed and that all their homework was done. But perhaps the most cardinal thing she did was help them understand why Daddy wasn’t at their basketball practice or piano recital. She always put me in a positive light. (Now, don’t get me wrong there were moments when we fought like medieval animals, but she eventually came around!)

Sarah also served as the chief cheerleader of all things Global Soap. Whenever I came back home exhausted and ready to give up because I felt so alone, she would sit down with me in the middle of the night and say, “Derreck we need this and you need to fight for it. This is our legacy and it depends so much on your persistence and total dedication. Don’t give up.”

Dreams are so powerful and demanding that they really require forgiveness and understanding from our partners, and Sarah stepped up to the plate in so many ways. Today the Global Soap Project is everything I dreamt it could be and more. Though success makes a great amnesia pill, I’ll never forget my wife’s support.

I’m lucky that she trusted my vision for the future even when things got rough. She taught me what it means to have faith, even when all seems to be lost.

As you live your life today, try to live out your vision and bring your spouse along. He or she will serve as the sounding board you need at midnight. She will rebuke you when no other will. He will comfort you when you fail. She will cry tears of joy with you when you succeed. He will be a beautiful thorn in the ass when you least expect it. And out of all this a dream will come true. I thank my wife for being the central woman in my life. And Sarah, dear, this is not a platitude!

After a couple of years of procrastinating and wondering what to do with my life, I had not forgotten my life’s desire of starting the Global Soap Project (GSP). Long story short, a new woman came into my life that would bring a greater dimension to my environment and experience. That woman, who has become a great friend of mine, is Vicki Gordon.

Vicki has a long history in hotel management as the Vice President of the InterContinental Hotel Group. If you ever meet her, you would understand why the GSP has become the instrument of change in the hotel industry that it’s become. Vicki is a redoubtable woman of character, elegance and an utter symbol of articulation in the way she’s put together. She is forceful when it comes to implementation and an apt networker with a hint of Southern-belle charm and gentility that woos any that come within her universe.

In Vicki I have learned that anything is possible and so when I first spoke to her for the help I needed to start the GSP, she listened attentively and smiled back with this jagged look that I hadn’t seen all the years I had known her. I asked why the irregular smile and she humbly revealed, “I am so sorry, Derreck, but I am ashamed that after all these years working in the Hotel Industry I have never thought of this incredible idea of recycling soap.” I said I understood but it takes just one person to pay attention to the environment in which they exist. I told her my father was a soap maker and also a printer. From him I had that thought of soap making tucked away in my head and when I saw the waste generated by the hotels, the idea came so quickly, it was as if I was meant to do it.

After telling her my personal story, Vicki was kind enough to grant me a meeting with the Buckhead Hotel Association in an elegant suburb of Atlanta. I had five minutes to make my presentation and quickly I made the case for my organization. The rest is history.

To be sure, in the past blog posts the key moments I have been talking about are ones when riches come through events and parts of life that you experience. I typically discuss the moments when life deals you a supposedly bad deck of cards, be it cancer or war, which end up determining your destination. But wait a minute — what about the people along the way that you meet who have the potential to play a remarkable role in shaping that destination? Can they help you shift the destination of death without impact or lead you to success in business? In this case, Vicki Gordon, like Marge and my mother, was a woman who sincerely knew how to channel my refugee environment, dream and vision into building an entity like Global Soap.

To that end, today I want to say to you, make sure that in your Rags to Riches story you identify that one or two people that hold one of your keys to success. These “key holders” make life easier and less dramatic in terms of fighting uphill battles. Because of Vicki’s extensive Hotel career, she knew folks at the Hotel Association and she was able to get that important meeting for me. If I had done it alone, I probably would have eventually gotten the meeting, but I would have had to make several calls and also had to make a much more tougher sell because I was new to the hotel industrial complex. With Vicki’s introduction, I was able to get the benefit of a doubt from this group of hoteliers. That very day, I was able to register most of the hotels in Buckhead! Essentially, Global Soap started because of my vision but it was brought to life thanks to a network of friendships and people that believed in me like Vicki.

If you want your Rags to Riches story to come to fruition, the first resource you need is a network of capable and experienced people who add value to your vision. Short of that, you will be caught in a web of the unsuccessful and unconnected, and that guarantees a climb to success that is much more difficult and slow, and could lead to the demise of your dream. Next, I think women have always been undervalued when it comes to their ability to get things done. I can guarantee you that I have found the connection to Vicki and her clairvoyance, to my network of women as a clear lighthouse to my vision. Women are not like men in my view. They have one thing that men don’t have much of in networking in that they are more emotionally intelligent about the purpose of the networking process. Vicki, for example, gave me not only her expertise; she also provided me with emotional support when I was losing a bit of hope. You see, one of my fears was the worry that if Global Soap outgrew my basement, what would I if I needed bigger warehouse space and more resources? Vicki quickly said that we could only cross that bridge when we came to it, and in the meantime, stay true to the basics. Keep picking up the soap from the hotels and I will work the other parts, she said.

One day she called me and told me that she had a meeting to see about the factory space… I was overjoyed when we got to the meeting to learn that we had a donated space to operate Global Soap for an entire year! Vicki did this behind my back without any excitement or fanfare, in other words she under-promised but over-delivered. Men, unlike women, tend to ask you to suck it up when the times are hard and detach emotion and the fatigue it carries with it. Women, on the other hand, create a soft landing for what promises to be a tough experience of hard work and negative experiences.Take what Lillian Vernon once said: “I became successful due to several reasons. I never gave up and I never let anyone or anything get in my way. I use the power of positive thinking to tackle obstacles and challenges so they don’t defeat me.”

This is so important when building entities like GSP because you come out the other end a whole human rather than a broken, unromantic, imbalanced and not-so-warm social entrepreneur. This is just my experience and I’m sorry if I’m generalizing, but I think those who have ever been coached by a woman will attest to my experience.

A key lesson here is that much as we treasure capital as a fundamental in building business, its equally as important to harness human capital by way of serious networks of people who can actually give you the same sort of resources that money brings to the table. Without people on your side, money is probably not going to get you far. Remember that. Hence the foundations to my Rags to Riches journey, built on this relationship with an inspiring, encouraging woman.

Being a refugee was the best thing that ever happened to me. Of course our view of history is 20/20, but when I think back to the things I learned during that sad time, it’s clear they’re the reasons I’m the man I am today.
Marge, a missionary from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania who came to Kenya to work with youth populations, took me in and literally babysat me while my mother took on a new job as a kindergarten teacher. The little money she made helped us get us small things like shoes as well as keep her dignity intact. She was so sad during this time; you could see the loss in her eyes — the loss of her home, business, and dignity. Yet during this time she transitioned into making sure that we, the kids, were well taken care of. By handing me over to Marge she wanted to make sure that my appetite for panache and style was still being met through this rather charming, elegant American woman.

Marge played a big role quenching my thirst for all things American. I wanted to act, sing and dance, but I also loved to play sports, specifically soccer. She gave me all of that and more. The key dramas we acted each year were the Christmas and the Easter stories. I was the first one to sign up for her Sunday school rehearsal acting plays. She was a great critic of my developing craft and always had me memorize my lines without fail. She set my trident and supercilious tendencies straight and taught me how to present myself to the world with a dose of humble pie as she called it. She said, “Derreck you can use your arrogance for good. You can use it to demand excellence out of yourself and others without making them feel beneath you and unwanted.” And she would mummer on the side, “your are refugee for crying out loud…”  My constant answer was always “yes mum,” but I would quickly revert to showmanship when I scored a goal during soccer games. (I was convinced that my arrogance would win me the heart of one or two beautiful girls.) And I added Table Tennis (yes not “ping pong” as Marge referred to it — it’s a serious game for pits sake) to my skills set and that became another reason for my profound relationship to Marge.

But perhaps the biggest gift that Marge helped me discover was that of public speaking. She one day announced in our Sunday school class that she was looking for four kids to be the preachers at one of the Sunday services which she had dubbed Youth Sunday. After the announcement, she immediately turned her eyes to me and in a very loving but intimidating way winked at me and said Derreck I think you should be one of the speakers! I immediately went into a cold shock experience with my tummy churning. Why? Because I had never spoken before a large audience and for all my charm and over confidence I was so scared I could hardly hold still if you know what I mean. Marge then asked as to please find a subject matter that we thought we wanted to speak about and that she would help us build it up. The length of the speech was to be fifteen minutes each and she expected us to sound and look the part!

Long story short, I spoke about the role of youth in the future of the church and I did so well one of the congregants happened to be a journalist of one of the key news papers called “The Nation” and he covered the sermon with glowing accolades in the Sunday section. After that speech, in tandem with the acting, Marge had managed to build a confident young man in me with an acute gift of public speaking and presentation skills that have helped me in my careers up to now.

Something is wrong with Marge: Marge like most missionaries would stay in the field for long stretches of time without the benefit of the great American health care if there were such a thing these days! One year, while I was in high school, Marge came back home to the USA for fallow, which is like a missionary break where they are supposed to do some fundraising for their upkeep as well as reconnect with their families, and that’s when she discovered that she had signs of cancer both were terminal ovarian and bone cancer. When I learned this new development in Marge’s life I was devastated. (On a side note, I have since learned that “approximately 21,880 women are diagnosed with ovarian cancer each year in the U.S (http://www.sharecare.com/question/how-women-die-ovarian-cancer) and 13,850 die from the disease. Ovarian cancer is the fifth leading cause of cancer death among U.S. women and equals approximately the number of deaths from all other gynecologic malignancies combined. The majority of women are diagnosed when the disease has reached an advanced stage; however, if detected early, the survival rate is more than 90%.”
Because she had spent her time taking care of us as refugees and ministering to us through church, she never got the topnotch medical care for cancer screening you need to avert the deadly diagnosis. Marge came back home (to Pittsburgh)  to die and soon she passed thereafter, which left me hollow. I never forgot her indelible imprint on my life. She taught me to be confident, elegant, articulate, American and most cardinal of all, how to appreciate the love of God.

After going to undergrad in Nairobi Kenya in my early twenties, I had started to come into my own. I was very aware of the opportunities that life had a head of me and I was really ready to take on the challenge of being a grown man. My mum and Marge had finally prepared me for life. I got chance to come to the USA for the first time, which was the most important break in my entire life. I landed in Philadelphia where I checked into a hotel and there in my room were three bars of soap: facial soap, hand soap, and body soap. And this didn’t even include the shampoos! I was shocked by the abundance and decided I would put those two bars away in my luggage for another day since I didn’t have any with me.

I was shocked when I returned to the room that evening and saw that the staff had replaced everything. This happened for three days in a row. Something was wrong with this picture, I thought. I didn’t want to be charged for all this soap, so I went to talk to the concierge about returning everything I had taken. When I explained my story to him he cracked up. Laughing, he said: “Hey brother, you see all ‘em white folk over here? They steal soap too, so you are good brother, don’t front!” We laughed for a minute and then I asked him what happened to the partially used bars of soap that are not completely used when a customer gets ready to leave and go home? He reckoned the hotel threw them out. I asked him how many hotels there were in the country and he didn’t know.

Well, I went back to my room and lost it. I shade a tear, as I have been known to do every now and then. (I must have picked up this art from Marge, who often shed a tear with me every now and then. She taught me that real men do cry. She also taught me about the right balance between male logic and female emotion. Both these emotions she said were critical in ones success) I sat back for a minute and all of a sudden I got an epiphany. I found out online that the U.S. hotel industrial complex discards 800 million bars of soap every year into the land fields. That’s 2.6 million bars of soap every day! In juxtaposition, 2 million kids die every year due to diarrhea related diseases. The Center for Disease Control (CDC) [http://www.cdc.gov/handwashing/] says you could mitigate these deaths by 40-47% if you put a bar of soap in the hands of each of these kids. This intervention with soap only costs 0.15 cents compared to treating the disease after it’s fully blown, which could easily cost upwards of $7. For the “bottom billion” that live on a dollar or two a day, chances are they aren’t going to pay any of their hard earned dollars towards luxuries like soap before they’ve eaten.

I realized the power that resided in recycling this partially used soap once I connected the following dots: my father’s business of soap making, the horrible refugee status I faced in Kenya, and a country where they had so much soap they threw it away! I decided right there and then that I would build a Non-for-Profit that would recycle this soap and take it to refugee camps and other vulnerable populations around the world, i.e. orphans, battered women, and so on. Thus,
the Global Soap Project was born. www.globalsoap.org.

My lesson here was that it’s important for us as sojourners through life to understand the power of our environment. When life deals us what we perceive as a bad card/hand, we can turn that into something valuable. Like I said before, my life was bleak after becoming a refugee in Kenya, but I never gave up hope. I took this time of my life to learn from an American woman that life doesn’t end because of bad situations. Rather therein the bad situation lays our life’s calling. Miracles happen during this time and if we are present enough in the moment with positive energy we can actually find our calling in life. In the next blog you will see how I built a whole organization moving my life from a black and white color orientation to a colored one with clear 3D visuals that helped me capitalize on my past to build my future. Riches to Rugs to Riches…R2R2R!!! watch out for the next blog…

Here is a Quote that inspires me today :

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meaness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whomever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

Jalal ad-Din Rumi

One fateful morning we awoke to the sound of gunfire outside our flat. My father looked out of the window to see a sea of people being hoarded off. There were soldiers everywhere with big guns who were yelling at everyone in Swahili, one of my national languages: “Get out of you flats right now!

My father looked at us with despondent eyes — he realized how much trouble we were in. He said hurriedly, “Okay guys pick up a few things and lets go. Stick together all of you.” We left our flat and were taken to a roundabout station along with many others where we were all accused of something incredible. A well-decorated soldier stood robustly at a podium where he screamed at the top of his lungs, “Last night two of my soldiers were killed on this village. I am here to find out who did it. We are going to have a firing squad until someone comes forward with this information.”

Immediately there was an audible gash of disbelief from the crowd. First of all, there was a curfew in the village. No one was allowed out on the streets after 6 p.m. Secondly, why would you victimize the whole village when there are processes of investigation in policing a State? So there we were before a “kangaroo court” because of these buffoons who didn’t know how to govern and always resorted to torture and killing.

Within no time, they rounded off four people who were brought to the front. Next, we heard loud gunshots. Yes, they had been killed on the spot. Quickly another four were rounded up, and people at this point were in total mayhem. Neighbors were pit against each other. The women and children cried. It was horrible. The second group of four was summarily shot to death. Before another group was picked, a young man offered himself as the killer in question. He was brought to the front of the room where there was a short interrogation and yet another gunshot. He was dead. What become evident to all of us at that point was that this young man was actually a visitor to the village and had just sacrificed his life to stop the killing. I will never forget this experience because how many of us a willing to sacrifice our lives for anything in protection of the common good? Well he did and after that we were informed of our freedom and warned to never kill any soldier.

After this experience and many more, my mother had a big discussion with my father about becoming refugees in Kenya where every Ugandan at the time fled. After we were attacked a second time, my mother, like a true mummy grisly bear, picked up my sisters and me and left for Kenya.

What started off, as a wonderful, normal life was now the life of refugees with no home country to speak off, a new language to learn, new friends to make, and a new culture to assimilate to. The fear that engulfed us was remarkable. Going to another land without knowing if you will ever see your homeland again is one of the most mind-numbing experiences.

What was shocking about being a refugee was realizing how many there were.

Did you know that there are 43.3 million refugees in the world, among whom 50 percent are women and over 10 percent are children? In Kenya, where I was a refugee, there are over 800,000 refugees, meaning one out of 30 people in Kenya is a refugee from a neighboring country. Why? Because of uncontrollable wars. War is one of the most devastating instruments against communities globally. And yes wars are very expensive for all of us globally, and more so for women.

For instance, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, according to the American Journal of Public Health published this month, the Guardian reports: “It found 1,152 women are raped every day — a rate equal to 48 per hour. That rate is 26 times more than the previous estimate of 16,000 rapes reported in one year by the United Nations.”

Apart from this horror that women have to endure, I also found that diseases, especially the easy ones to treat are a big deal within the refugee population. Among the poor refugees, sanitation and hygiene, which are hugely important for women and girls, become an anomaly. Small amenities like soap are inaccessible. Here in the U.S., a bar of soap is so cheap we barely think of its cost. For people who live on a dollar or less a day, it’s hard to take that and buy soap when you haven’t eaten yet. So again women who don’t make much and have no control of their resources, because men take those away from them, fall victim to diarrhea. In fact according to Rehydrate.org:

“2.2 million children will die from diarrhea and related diseases this year. 80% of them in the first two years of their life; 42,000 a week, 6,000 a day, four every minute, one every fourteen seconds.”

But as the era of questioning carried on in my mind, I made and important mental note as a young boy going though this horrific transformation. My father made soap and here I was with people that needed soap. Something could be done. I parked that away into the universe and hoped I could find a solution one day …

Have you ever wondered what a bicultural child looks like and how that kid views the world through the perspective of two cultures? More importantly, have you ever seen one that borrows from both cultures in order to become successful? Well I am one such child.

I who was raised by two women: my biological, Ugandan mother, Miriam, and my adopted mother from Pittsburgh, USA, Marge. The cultural shock I experienced living between the lives of these two women was enough to make me the weirdest kid on the block! But my story doesn’t begin there, of course, so I’ll start from the beginning.

I was born one year before the reprobate leader of Uganda, Idi Amin, took power in Uganda. (Many of you may have seen this bloody idiot depicted in the movie, Last King of Scotland.)

Before Uganda deteriorated into the abyss of war, my mother left her job as a teacher — the pay was too low — and reinvented herself as a businesswoman. Her newfound craft was designing wedding gowns and tailoring. She didn’t have mannequins so she would have me dress up in these beautiful dresses to measure sizes. I would constantly remind her that I was a boy and she would respond: “Son, this isn’t about your sex; it’s about whether or not you will have school fees next semester. And if you tell your dad I dressed you like this I will kill you, do you get?”

That was Miriam. She had me cross-dressing at the age of 7! She loved fashion. She always said to me: “Fashion is a language that is spoken by a few; try to speak it and you will always get a free compliment.” To this day, my mum loves seeing and being seen. (And I dress well because of it!)

As Miriam was building her business something was happening in Uganda, my father was also reinventing himself from being a teacher to owning a printing press and making soaps. Then all hell broke loose. Uganda, under the rule of Idi Amin, fell into a war that brought the most horrific doldrums in our comfortable lives. What started off as a small war grew into a regional war that pulled in countries like Tanzania to collectively get rid of Amin. What had started to be a beautiful, comfortable life for us as a family turned out to be a disaster, which is where this story really begins …

dk