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Connie Duckworth interweaves business and charity to save the women of Afghanistan. At a recent cocktail party at New York’s Connoisseur’s Antique Fair, Manolo Blahnik-heeled women cooed over brightly colored and intricately patterned Afghan rugs. Five rugs were sold that night, 15 by the time the fair ended, for a total of $32,000. It didn’t hurt the sales pitch that the booth was lined with pictures of the impoverished Afghan women who had spent months weaving the rugs.

The go-between in this merchandising effort, which benefits Afghan women and their families, is a 51-year-old former Goldman Sachs managing director, Connie K. Duckworth. A few years ago Duckworth traveled to Afghanistan as a member of the U.S.-Afghan Women’s Council, a government-sponsored board that aims to get private businesses and charities involved in Afghanistan. Duckworth was inspired to open her Rolodex and start an organization called Arzu, which means “hope” in Dari, one of the main Afghan languages.

The nonprofit acts as a conduit between Afghan weavers in remote villages and U.S. rug buyers. A family signs up to weave rugs for Arzu and gets paid an average of $400 per 5-by-7-foot rug. In addition, the family gets a 50% cash bonus, provided that the members participate in educational and health programs offered by Arzu. Literacy classes are one hour a day in the homes of Afghan women. An Arzu monitor checks every month whether children are attending school. A driver takes women who would deliver babies at home to clinics.

Duckworth tells of Kimat, 36, a widow with five children to feed in the remote northern Afghanistan border town of Sakiz Khana. Thirteen hundred dollars in debt for daily expenses and her husband’s funeral last year, she turned to Arzu and now weaves rugs. She gets extra money from the organization because she has agreed to enroll her youngest son in school and takes literacy classes with her daughter. “Now we can write and read,” Kimat is quoted as saying. “We feel a big change in our lives.”

It takes between three and 12 months to handcraft a rug. So far Arzu has received 247 and sold 206 of them in the U.S., at prices from $1,000 to $10,000. Duckworth’s buyers get rugs for a third less than they would pay at a big department store. “We want to be the Dell for Afghan rugs,” she says.

In Afghanistan, Duck-worth has a dozen people setting specifications (wool must be from sheep in Gazni, Afghanistan) and working with the families and health care providers. “The goal is to let the private sector process work, with some monitoring,” says Duckworth.
Success in salesmanship will be crucial to the success of this sort of fusion of charity with commercialism. Says Duckworth: “It’s a lot easier to save the world when you can write a check.”

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