What comes from Am-I-making-a-difference? The story of MOGwee

My name is Colleen Mascenik. I’ve been a development economist for 17 years and a mom for 18. I have 6 kids, a noisy home, and little time to think. For nearly two decades at an international financial institution, developmental milestones have been an impersonal measure attached to impersonal projects. I wanted to have an impact, but my own contribution seemed a very small part of a very complex whole.

After chemo, December 2015--hair returning!

Then I got cancer. More accurately, I learned quite late that I had multiple, very extensive tumors in my right breast and lymph nodes, and would go through surgery, chemo and radiation. First, cancer shocks you with the possibility of death. Then, it shocks you with the reality of life. And getting off the radiation table on the last session in 2016, I had to line up priorities, who-am-I and what-am-I-doing, without the anchor of time. I might have 3 years. I might have 30.

So while I re-embraced my family, I began to re-assess my work. Am I making a difference? Is my work causing people to live better?

In May 2017 at American University of Central
Asia, with the future MOGwee girl-team

Day by day I felt less certain about giant institutional interventions, and more certain about the interventions we make personally in one another’s lives. I felt less convinced about the vagaries of development projects and more convinced of the positive impact of income and dignity to make people live better.

Creating the Tajikistan team with Zilberman
and Olim in Dushanbe, April 2017

 This is my story, but not only my story. MOGwee is my dream that people should earn more. I want to create a million jobs. MOGwee is also the story of people who are over-talented and under-compensated. It’s the story of people who don’t realize they’re on the edge of a completely new market.

Join us.