Meet the veteran documentarian who created “She Rises Up,” an inspiring film about women entrepreneurs in developing countries.
Independent Women’s Forum is pleased to announce that our own Maureen Castle Tusty, an award-winning documentary film maker, is the latest entry in our popular series of Champion Women profiles.
Maureen’s latest triumph is “She Rises Up,” an inspiring documentary about women entrepreneurs in developing countries. Maureen served as Director and her husband Jim Tusty was Executive Producer. Maureen and Jim’s previous work includes the acclaimed “Singing Revolution,” based on the events that led to Estonia’s shaking off the yoke of the Soviet Union and featured massive singing gatherings.
“She Rises Up” is hailed by film industry site, Hollywood in Toto, as “a testament to capitalism that doesn’t ignore its imperfections.” “She Rises Up” received an impressive review from Reason magazine, whose editor wrote, “Documentaries intended to be inspirational—as this one clearly is—too often sloppily romanticize the lives of entrepreneurs in impoverished places or force their subjects into cookie-cutter storytelling templates. She Rises Up does neither...the result yanks the heartstrings without being sappy.”
The three “stars” of “She Rises Up” are Gladys Yupanqui, who founded a flourishing mini-market in Peru; Selyna Peiris of Sri Lanka, who is expanding a textile company her mother founded; and Magatte Wade of Senegal, who is building a cosmetics company to provide jobs in Senegal.
Unfortunately, the heavily-regulated business environments in developing nations are typically not conducive to entrepreneurship, especially for women. “There are still many laws that limit a woman’s access to bank accounts,” Maureen explains, “or for her to get a loan on her own. There are also limits on the hours that women can work. These added obstacles are often meant as a means of protecting women, or the attitude that women can’t quite do it on their own. These laws still exist in many countries, unsurprisingly, those are often countries with some of the highest poverty rates in the world.
“Another obstacle is that often the political class wants to control the citizens, it wants to control the economy. There are excessive regulations that entrepreneurs have to struggle with when hiring and firing of people and it’s very complicated. Therefore, starting a business or expanding is very complicated. We follow Magatte in Senegal for days, as she travels three hours into Dakar, the capital, to meet with her CPA and talk about all these regulations on the pay rate. People have agreed to work for her, but she can’t hire them because of these regulations, which don’t even apply to the type of people she’s hiring. So then to get a bank account she has to get other certifications, go back to the town, and have documents verified. She faces excessive hurdles. And then there are the tariffs on the cardboard boxes she needs for her products. These tariffs can be up to 77 percent of the value of the boxes.”
We know you’ll enjoy meeting Maureen, Jim, and her three “stars.” Maureen and Jim are outstanding storytellers. Their work shows us there is a way for developing countries to create strong economies.
