In 2019, Ajiri applied for and won a small grant ($20,000) from PepsiCo—part of PepsiCo's "empowering women" initiative. I recently went online to see if it was still offering the Stacy's Rise grant and it is no surprise that PepsiCo has stopped its DEI initiatives (which included, it turns out, empowering small women business owners). Granted, $20,000 was a cheap price to pay for looking like it cared about women's rights, but there were real people in the corporate office, people who genuinely seemed to care. And while people at Pepsi's office seemed to greet Ajiri with enthusiasm, during the mentorship part of the program Ajiri was met with corporate befuddlement.
"You should print the artwork, it would be much more cost-effective."
"You can't possibly answer the phone, it is so inefficient."
"You seriously write notes on every online order that comes through?"
"You know, you should sell your teas on Amazon."
I couldn't back up my responses with numbers showing tremendous growth. At the time I felt so small in their big corporate office trying to justify why we picked up the phone when a customer called (and why we even have a phone number on our website). When it came time for our "pitch" (in which we were competing for $100,000), Pepsi wanted numbers and growth and a clear path for better margins. I could show them the growth of the women and the growth of the orphans and the growth of a community in Kenya. But that kind of growth is tertiary to profit and profit.
This is what happens when profit is the sole purpose of a company, when customers are segmented "focus groups"—they are so concerned with the bottom-line they don't even realize they are sinking to the bottom of morality.
The further we recede from the corporate world, the better we feel. We are building what we want to see in the world. Inclusion isn't an afterthought in our world. We want impoverished communities in western Kenya to be included in employment and education. We want people to be included in the profits.
The Ajiri scholars (all of them orphans) gathered in our office for lunch nearly every day of their school break. And nearly every day they would save some of their lunch for their siblings at home. These scholars, sitting in our small office down a red clay road in Kisii, Kenya, don't see saving their lunch to give to someone else as "equity or inclusion." To them, sharing your good fortune is simply something that you do. Sharing doesn't need to be explained or categorized or justified. To them, it is so easy to do the right thing. So why does the world make it seem so hard?
Thank you for following along in this parallel world. We'll keep picking up the phone and writing notes. We'll keep DEIing until we DIE.
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Kate Holby
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