[ Up-tempo music plays ] -I want to create jobs in the places that don't have jobs so people have a choice to stay in their communities and live good lives.

-I think a lot of people see this just as a textile business.

I see the potential of this to really, really uplift our communities.

-[ Speaking Spanish ] -♪ She's on her way, on her way to rise up ♪ ♪ Ready to move ♪ ♪ She's ready to stand up ♪ ♪ She's on her way ♪ ♪ On her way to rise up ♪ ♪ Ready to move ♪ ♪ Ready to move ♪ -Today, what I want to share with you is something that shattered my heart.

What haunts me is story after story after story after story of young people, my people, dying out there on the ocean, serving as fish food.

So why are these people leaving?

They're leaving because they have no jobs.

♪♪ So I have this attitude in life.

Something is wrong.

Find a way to fix it.

♪♪ ♪♪ African women really dominate the markets.

Everything happens with women.

♪♪ So the men, they're the ones who went fishing.

Then you see women everywhere.

They're the customers and also the sellers.

♪♪ From the West we're thinking about the farmer's-market model.

Oh, you know, Saturday morning, it's just all so beautiful and all so romantic and everything.

But that's not what it is here.

It is absolutely not.

I realized that a lot of these women were, in a way, necessity entrepreneurs, because there was no real other jobs, quite frankly.

These are very harsh lives.

-[ Speaking Wolof ] -[ Speaking Wolof ] ♪♪ -[ Speaking Wolof ] -[ Speaking Wolof ] I want to create jobs in the places that don't have jobs so people have a choice to stay and live good lives.

♪♪ ♪♪ I have always known that I like beauty products, and that's when I had this idea to create a lip balm, almost as a talisman for people to constantly be reminded of a very simple truth -- that skin is skin.

If we do that, maybe we get a chance at racial harmony.

-[ Speaking Wolof ] ♪♪ -I was born in M'Bour.

M'Bour is south of here.

♪♪ I must have been around 2 when my mom and dad emigrated to Europe.

They had to leave because of economic reasons.

And so they left me behind with my grandma.

The biggest thing I learned from my grandma is a sense of what they call Gëm sa bopp.

In Wolof, "Gëm sa bopp" means "believe in yourself."

[ Children shouting ] But one day, a big electric pole fell while we were playing.

But my best friend, it hit him here on the neck.

And my friend was dead.

When my parents heard about this, they freaked out and decided I had to go to Europe to be safe with them.

I was about 8 years old.

I barely knew them.

I remember the day I had to go.

I wrestled with my grandma, almost got her naked, you know, pulling on her clothes so badly.

♪♪ And next thing I know, I'm somewhere in Europe.

And I was pissed.

I was pissed.

I was pissed.

I arrived in the middle of the winter, for Christ's sake.

It was like, "Are you kidding me?

Really?"

♪♪ If my parents were able to stay, if they were able to build a life in Senegal, I would have still been with my grandma.

Of course I will never be mad at my parents for what they did.

They did what they had to do.

So I want to make sure that others don't have the same fate.

That's pretty much what it is, so at the end of the day, I think it's pretty much a story of love.

Love for my grandma.

So...yeah.

♪♪ ♪♪ -[ Speaking Tamil ] -[ Speaking Tamil ] -[ Speaking Tamil ] ♪♪ -We are a country where, you know, 52% of our population is women.

They don't have financial freedom.

We have industries that are powered by women, like the tea industry.

This is at very low levels of pay.

-[ Speaking Tamil ] ♪♪ -[ Speaking Tamil ] ♪♪ -I started a textile company.

It was only the challenge that I should be doing something worthwhile with my life.

♪♪ [ Machinery clicking ] Selyna was not even one year.

She was on my lap, and my husband asked me, "What name would you want to give the company?"

And I gave it Selyna's name.

My brother and I would go in the night.

We would be stuck, like, helping her check quality and, you know, all of these things.

Falling asleep in the factory.

But we saw my mother working hard.

And I think that is the greatest inspiration that we have.

-Selyn has embraced a 2,500-year-old history of handloom weaving and textiles.

While we remain true to our heritage, we also create modern products.

We export to Germany, to Italy, and also into the US and Australia.

We target women in the rural parts of Sri Lanka, and we create a model to give them access to work.

So flexibility when it comes to hours of work.

You can take work home.

You can work from home.

♪♪ -[ Speaking Sinhala ] ♪♪ -At one point we were doing this financial management workshop.

And, you know, it's textbook to say let a woman save a portion of her salary, put it into a bank book that cannot be touched by any other family member.

And two women came back the next day.

One was beaten up by her husband, and the other had her sewing machine axed.

Why?

Because she didn't give the entire salary to the man.

♪♪ We really need to think about these unintended consequences, because, as the Buddha said-- or Isaac Newton even said-- every action has an equal and opposite reaction.

We really need to see how we can create better ecosystems for women to thrive.

We have to have the right to decide on how we want our futures to be.

We have to have the choice.

♪♪ ♪♪ -[ Speaking Spanish ] ♪♪ ♪♪ -[ Speaking Spanish ] -[ Speaking Spanish ] ♪♪ -I really felt as a Black African immigrant, that France was going to be too small for my ambitions.

And I thought about the whole world, and the only place that made sense to me was America.

I've always been given choices, and it led me to a life of abundance, in a way.

But often I would compare that to those who were not as fortunate as me, especially those who stayed back home.

But I did something.

I made a vow.

And I said, "God, from here on, every breath I take, I want it to be to the service of my country and to my continent and to my people."

When I did that... [ Exhales deeply ] ...peace came upon me.

A few months later, after that happened, I went back to Senegal.

I had been talking about this beverage that I loved so much, the hibiscus drink called bissap here, you know, my grandma used to make.

When we visited people, they would offer a tray of drinks with Pepsi or Coca-Cola, but no bissap.

And I was like, "This is ridiculous."

Because in the meantime, what's happening is this hibiscus drink, indigenous drink, is being squeezed out.

The women who used to grow the hibiscus no longer have a livelihood.

So from there, I decided that I would create this company called Adina.

And as its flagship product, it would be this hibiscus drink, the bissap.

And the goal was we're going to put all of these women back to work.

And at the height, it was 9,000 women.

And institutional investors started to be involved in the business.

[ Up-tempo music plays ] -Well, my wife and I had the good occasion to meet a young woman named Magatte.

We have a byline that we use now called "Drink No Evil."

So you can make up your own mind what evil is.

-Some folks thought there was so much more margins that could be squeezed out and the way we're gonna do that is we're now gonna try to source from China and no longer from these women.

What do you do with these women?

"Oh, we're gonna give them donations."

I was like, "Are you kidding me?"

That whole time, I was in the world of those who claim that they care -- you know, the "sustainability world."

I saw a lot of hypocrisy, basically.

I left Adina broken into a million pieces.

♪♪ [ Up-tempo music plays ] I created Skin Is Skin because I wanted to bring jobs to Africa.

In fact, I hire primarily African women so they can have access to the economic independence that only a job can give.

It's been my lifelong journey to bring prosperity to my beloved continent.

♪♪ ♪♪ -[ Speaking Wolof ] -[ Speaking Wolof ] ♪♪ -You know, like, how when a country is prosperous, it enjoys its sovereignty?

When you make money, the world listens.

And it works even at the family level.

When a woman is making money, she doesn't have to put up with situations that are not right.

♪♪ -[ Speaking Wolof ] ♪♪ -[ Speaking Wolof ] ♪♪ -I see some NGOs that they come in.

They're like, "Women's rights."

And it doesn't matter if an army of you come here trying to enforce her rights.

It's just not gonna happen.

They will not be enforced as long as they're poor.

♪♪ ♪♪ [ Birds chirping ] -[ Speaking Spanish ] -[ Speaking Spanish ] ♪♪ -[ Speaking Spanish ] [ Gunfire ] [ Man speaking Spanish, group singing in Spanish ] [ Explosion echoes ] ♪♪ -[ Speaking Spanish ] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ [ Down-tempo music plays ] ♪♪ -The queues are growing to cremate Sri Lanka's COVID-19 victims.

This mobile-phone footage of hospitals overflowing with COVID-19 patients shows patients in hospital gardens, on walls, on corridors, and ICU floors waiting for treatment.

-When the pandemic hit us, I remember a couple of us sitting there and thinking... ..."What do we do?"

-We used to supply for hotels, uniforms, linen and all.

They are also not functioning because of no tourism.

-We couldn't export because, I mean, the ports had shut down.

So two months of no income.

And I remember financial consultants at that time telling us, "You know, what you need to do is lay off your staff, cut down on your expenses."

And I remember my mother telling us, "Absolutely not.

Because if we are not there for our people during crisis, then we shouldn't be here in the first place."

♪♪ So we thought, "Why don't we create a product that can not just give work to our people in their homes but also be able to impact the community where they most need it to?"

So this is really where the pad was born.

♪♪ -4.2 million women in Sri Lanka are menstruating.

Only 30% has the access to sanitary products.

♪♪ -[ Speaking Tamil ] -Most of them cannot afford a pad at the moment, so they actually wear a cloth, which is not so hygienic at all.

-[ Speaking Tamil ] ♪♪ -[ Speaking Tamil ] ♪♪ -Things like this really inhibit girls from going to school during their periods, because they don't want to stain their white uniforms.

-[ Speaking Tamil ] -[ Speaking Tamil ] -[ Speaking Tamil ] -It's things like this that then spiral into the work economy.

[ Machinery humming ] -So we as a company thought how we can contribute to provide a solution, because we wanted something for the community as well as we needed to give an income for our employees.

♪♪ ♪♪ -So when you invest in a pad, a set of pads, they can reuse it and reuse it and reuse it and reuse it.

So it lifts the burden of that monthly fixed cost on a family.

♪♪ -[ Speaking Sinhala ] We have realized that there are two main reasons for period poverty, and one is the lack of access to basic menstrual needs.

And the next reason is the lack of knowledge.

We try to explain to them the science behind it.

♪♪ -[ Speaking Tamil ] ♪♪ -Crippling economic crisis, political upheaval, unrest, frustration, long queues for fuel.

It is the people of Sri Lanka that continue to suffer.

♪♪ ♪♪ -Thousands of Sri Lankans occupied government buildings, pushing out now former president Gotabaya Rajapaksa, ending his family's political dynasty that left Sri Lanka hurtling towards economic collapse.

-Food prices first doubled, then tripled.

-[ Speaking Tamil ] -The cost of living is too high.

There's inflation at 100-plus percent.

So despite what Selyn is doing to kind of address the food-security issues... ...I mean, it's just simply not enough.

-And now there's an additional 30% tax, which will make us utterly incompatible in the export market.

We are working on very slim margins in order to survive at the moment.

-It's just an exacerbation of all the issues that Sri Lanka has always had.

-The easiest way out will be for us to say, "That's enough.

We have done 30 years.

We will now wind up."

And then what will happen to the people?

Because we want to keep our workforce.

♪♪ -[ Speaking Spanish ] ♪♪ -[ Speaking Spanish ] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -[ Speaking Spanish ] ♪♪ ♪♪ -[ Speaking Spanish ] [ Applause ] -[ Speaking Spanish ] [ Up-tempo music plays ] ♪♪ ♪♪ -[ Speaking Spanish ] [ Cheers and applause ] -[ Speaking Spanish ] -[ Speaking Spanish ] [ Indistinct conversations ] ♪♪ -[ Speaking Spanish ] ♪♪ -[ Speaking Spanish ] -[ Speaking Spanish ] -Hello?

[ Speaking Wolof ] [ Laughter ] ♪♪ Why are people poor?

People are poor because they have no money.

You have no money because you have no source of income.

And for most of us, what is a source of income?

Jobs.

Thank you.

Now, if jobs is what fixes poverty and jobs come from businesses, then don't you think maybe for a second that we should focus on making it easy for a small-business person to start and run their business?

Don't you think that it makes sense?

Why is it that when I look at the "Doing Business" index ranking of the World Bank that ranks every country in the world in terms of how easy or hard it is to start a company -- You tell me why African countries are basically at the bottom of that list.

That's why we're poor.

We're poor because it is literally impossible to do business in these countries of ours.

♪♪ When foreign multinational companies come here, they say to our leaders, "There's absolutely no way I'm gonna be subject to these rules and regulations of yours when it comes to business."

So what do they do?

They have to give them special treatment.

They're basically lessening the bureaucracy for them.

Uh, don't you think that should be your clue to do it for everybody else?

My country does not make it easy for Senegalese entrepreneurs to run a business.

This is why there are no jobs here.

It's not people.

It's policies.

♪♪ [ Speaking French ] So, for a contract to be valid in this country, three people have to sign -- the employer, the employee, the state.

So the labor-inspection office doesn't know the employee, doesn't even know the size of our business.

Nothing.

Yet that person has to come in with us on this marriage that we're trying to make happen.

-[ Speaking French ] There's so much noise out there, and the noise is we're poor because bad leaders, we're poor because colonialism, we're poor because slavery.

It's all noise.

We're poor because we have sucky laws when it comes to doing business.

[ Speaking French ] [ Down-tempo music plays ] This anti-business sentiment -- I don't know where you got this, but you did not get this from our forefathers.

Our birthright is to be free-enterprise people.

My fellow Senegalese, they are really convinced that it's because we're poor that everything is so dysfunctional.

And I tell them, "On the contrary.

It's because everything is so dysfunctional that we're poor."

♪♪ To have a heart for the poor?

That's easy.

But to have a mind for the poor -- That's the challenge.

♪♪ [ Machinery rattling ] [ Mid-tempo music plays ] -Robert is professor of practice in fashion sustainability.

We met randomly in October 2020, and together we conceptualized this project to take Sri Lanka's handloom textiles to high-value markets.

And one of the strategies is to work with young designers who are up and coming and who believe in sustainability.

-So, this was the dress that was on the cover of Vogue, and has been worn by multiple celebrities and designers.

It belongs to Andrea Brocca, who is experimenting and developing and working with Sri Lankan craft.

-And Andrea is here with us to design a fantastic textile to take into one of the most prestigious fashion weeks of the world next year.

-So, I'm half Italian, half Sri Lankan.

I'm trying to reconnect to my roots through my work.

I'm finding ways to develop, you know, the traditional handloom fabrics in a very couture manner.

-So the idea of presenting it in Paris next year is to really see how we can convert that fabric into a higher value.

So then the idea is to return the same increase to the people who are weaving this.

So now, by integrating blockchain technology into our product, we can really trace what is in this product.

So if, say, it's this shirt, who made it?

Was the person who made it given fair wages?

So what is important to us will be measured and third-party verified using the blockchain.

And that, we feel, is the future.

I know we are surrounded by crisis and bad news, but I feel nothing but excitement, you know?

Like, this is how you kind of bring rural communities to the forefront.

♪♪ -At first, my idea was to become a politician.

And then I discovered that you can do so much good with a private initiative like ours.

-[ Speaking Sinhala ] -[ Speaking Sinhala ] ♪♪ -[ Speaking Sinhala ] ♪♪ -[ Speaking Tamil ] [ Music builds, continues ] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -Our big flagship store is Whole Foods Markets in the US.

But you also can buy it at many natural-food stores.

♪♪ Tish and Snooky, the founders of Manic Panic... Hey, guys.

...I'm very excited because today we're gonna talk about a possibility for them distributing our products directly to all of their independent stores.

-Did you already work out something with our Amazon seller?

-We have worked everything out with them.

We even shipped them their first purchase order.

It was shipped out.

I look forward to our next update, guys.

-Great to see you.

♪♪ -[ Speaking French/ Wolof ] ♪♪ We take our work very seriously, because unfortunately, too often we are working against a very strong bias in people's minds in the West that, you know, African-made products might not be the best-made products because they think, "Oh, yeah.

These people are poor.

Whatever.

I mean, come on."

So we take it upon us as an interesting challenge to counter and hopefully change that stereotype.

[ Cheers and applause ] -[ Speaking Spanish ] ♪♪ ♪♪ -[ Speaking Spanish ] -[ Speaking Spanish ] ♪♪ [ Down-tempo music plays ] ♪♪ -It's about the multiplying effect.

That's why Skin Is Skin has to work.

We just intend to be the catalyst for something so much bigger.

Real scaling up will happen when others come and do what we do.

And then the magic happens.

-This is the future.

There is no other way to do business.

How do I balance people, planet, profit?

It's not impossible.

-[ Speaking Spanish ] ♪♪ -When it comes to addressing poverty and the poor, "prosperity" almost seems like a dirty word.

Yet that's the only solution to poverty.

It's prosperity building.

♪♪ [ Angélique Kidjo's "She Rises Up" plays ] ♪♪ ♪♪ -♪ She's on her way, on her way to rise up ♪ ♪ Ready to move ♪ ♪ She's ready to stand up ♪ ♪ She's on her way ♪ ♪ On her way to rise up ♪ ♪ Ready to move ♪ ♪ She's ready to stand up ♪ ♪ I'm going to be strong ♪ ♪ I will never look back ♪ ♪ I will never do wrong ♪ ♪ I'll keep my eyes on the top ♪ ♪ She's on her way ♪ ♪ On her way to rise up ♪ ♪ Ready to move ♪ ♪ She's ready to stand up ♪ ♪ Ready to move ♪ ♪ She's ready to stand up ♪ ♪ Hey ♪