THE NEW RECRUITS is an Emmy-award nominated documentary about a battalion of jet-setting business students armed with a radical plan to end global poverty: charge poor people for goods and services. Narrated by actor Rainn Wilson (The Office), THE NEW RECRUITS takes an unflinching look at social entrepreneurship, a movement touted as the new alternative to charity–its ideals, practitioners, and realities. The result is a hilarious, evocative, edge-of-your-seat thrill ride along a road paved with good intentions.
Filmed on location in India, Pakistan and Kenya, THE NEW RECRUITS follows three business students overseas as they try to figure out how to sell to the poor. In the prestigious Acumen Fund Fellows Program, Heidi Krauel, Joel Montgomery and Suraj Sudhakar spend one year working with start-ups selling drip irrigation to farmers in Pakistan, LED lights in rural India, and pay toilet service in Kenya. Their business school training hasn’t prepared them for all the challenges they face, but the recruits remain optimistic.
As entertaining as it is provocative, THE NEW RECRUITS shows an unbiased look at the challenges and rewards of social entrepreneurship.
Produced by the award-winning Ironbound Films, 2010.
