Have you seen this map? It shows just how BIG Africa is. It’s easy to lump a lot all together under the label of “Africa.”

And yet, Africa is an entire continent – one that could fit the United States, India, China, Eastern Europe, and a number of western European countries, all within it’s borders! Africa is 20% of the world’s landmass and has 54 separate countries.

Traveling in Malawi, just a tiny sliver on most maps of Africa, I was in awe of the vast countryside to see, so many different languages to hear, and all the people to meet within Malawi.

Besides providing good party trivia, what is the point of thinking about the enormity of Africa? It can be overwhelming to think the really big problems such as pollution and political instability in so many African countries.

A ripple of goodness

Spirit in Action is working in Africa to start small ripples of change, which can reach much further than what we can do alone, reaching to those big challenges. I may not be able to influence the government in the Central African Republic but I can start to poke small ripples of goodness in the pool.

When things seem so great, I look around to see what I can do, what small thing I can give, to make an impact in just one other person’s life. And it turns out, that making this small impact can start to make larger inroads.

Grace is excited to continue high school! Read her family’s story here: http://godsspiritinaction.org/love-will-find-a-way/

Here’s what we’re doing:

1 Individual = receives a letter with encouragement and self-help materials (gardening, composting, starting savings groups) from Spirit in Action; (Read example)

1 Family = receives a $150 grant from Spirit in Action to start a business and improve their house and send their children to school; (Read example)

1 Community = receives a Community Grant from Spirit in Action to start a chicken-rearing process and a local village savings and low-interest loans group. (Read example)

Sharing the Gift

Then, 1+1+1 = Once people receive, they are encouraged to give forward to someone else who they see is in need; Sharing the Gift, we call it. (Read example)

That gift is shared over and over again. Then, this is my prayer, the gift ripples all the way to the country and regional level. Maybe that person who convinced the Malawian President Joyce Banda to sell the $13.3 million presidential jet and rebuild international relationships to help Malawi’s poorest was touched by part of the Spirit in Action ripple.

Or maybe, someone who realized that they were feeling small in the midst of the great world took a step to help someone by putting a Spirit-filled ripple into action and helped you.

Thank you for making our ripple big enough to reach more individuals, families, and communities than we can know or count.

Margaret Ikiara (center) talks with one of the support groups at CIFORD Kenya.

One of the things I really admired about Del Anderson was his passion for learning. He was still reading, writing, thinking, and learning well into his 80s, 90s, and past 100 years old! This morning, I read one of his journal essays about improving his listening skills. (The quotes are from an article by Morton T. Kelsey that inspired this writing.)

These are some of my favorite passages from Del:

To read the full essay, go to: http://godsspiritinaction.org/listening/

Del with Lucile, whom he called “one of God’s outstanding listeners.” (1982)

• Morton Kelsey says, “Unless we listen to human beings, we do not know what they are. In such cases we project either positive or negative elements of ourselves upon other human beings and try to force them into the pattern of what we think they ought to be. This may be a kind of communication with ourselves, but it is certainly no communication with the other person, and no basis for real relationship.”
• Kelsey further says, “There is no other way to learn to listen to God except by learning to listen to human beings.” This was a “shocker” for me.
• Then, how do I become silent as I listen to others? I allow myself to be silent with other people, silent not only in speech, but also in my inner response, an inner silence. I neither agree nor disagree with what is said; as I really listen it opens the way for people to be what they are.
• Listening is love in action. It is one level of prayer. Listening assists me to penetrate through my human ego and “hear the Spirit of God which dwells in the heart of every person.” Real listening is a religious experience. It is awesome; one method of worship.
• Listening has been one of the missing links in my spiritual growth. Though I spend time daily listening to God, alone in the Silence, I have failed to realize the need for me to listen to people as they begin to talk.
• Now, we are in a position to be used by God in God’s Healing Light and process of recognizing, acknowledging, affirming, and claiming the Christhood within each other. Then we are God-bearers for and with each other. How awesome! What a mystery, what depth of each human soul!

Who can you listen to today as an act of prayer and worship?

I bet you never feel overwhelmed, right? Taxes, exams, deadlines are greeted with ease? The great need in your family, your community, and our world seems manageable? Right! Just last week, there was a day – a cold, cloudy day – when I felt like I could never possibly do enough in the world.

“It’s all too exhausting to keep up with Joneses,” I wrote in my journal, contemplating another organization’s fancy new website and celebrity endorsers, “and what’s it all for anyway?”

Then my pencil took on a mind of it’s own: “Seek justice, love kindness, walk humbly with God.” Refreshing! “That’s all that God, and I believe, our SIA Board and supporters, require of me.”

So, I spent some time to take stock on how I’m living up to my requirements.

Seek Justice

• This one’s pretty easy, because seeking justice is a part of all programs we support.
• MAVISALO, the local micro-loans group in Malawi is all about providing access to small loans for farmers and entrepreneurs in Manyamula village. Rather than let neighbors take out loans from the institutional lenders at sky-high interest rates, people came together for financial justice in their town.
• Our Small Business Fund grants give $150 to the poorest people in villages, giving people who have been overlooked and turned away in the past a chance to start a business and learn financial management skills.
• The CIFORD Kenya program seeks justice for girls in their district, informing them about their rights and teaching them about women’s health and HIV/AIDS prevention.

Love Kindness

• I feel a warm, kind heart within me when I connect with you – our supporters, partners, and Facebook friends, especially when I get to write thank you notes, and when I get a really great grant proposal and I get to engage with the person and ask more questions.
• I also practice this in my daily life: greeting neighbors as we pass, helping to push a car out of the snow; sharing cookies with our downstairs neighbor, writing letters to friends.
• I try to be kind to myself too by giving myself permission to read a good book, and sipping tea in bed in the mornings.

Walk Humbly

• I know I can do more with humility than with ego. Ego keeps me thinking about myself, my “legacy,” my impact, rather than think about the people I am serving.
• Keeping my practice of daily contemplation, prayer, and reading of Del’s writings.
• Responding to each email request with honesty and humility, honoring each person’s effort to improve their community and seek assistance
• Graciously thank all our volunteer Small Business Fund coordinators, who give their time to do the real work of SIA on the ground.

When I’m striving after things, when I have a day when I’m feeling small, can I stop and see if the things I’m worried about fit into my requirements or not?

For the last post of 2012 I reflect with gratitude on the amazing community of Spirit in Action. Below is an except from my sharing with the Point Richmond First United Methodist Church last month about the power of community.

Dorothy Day says, “The only answer in this life, to the loneliness we are all bound to feel, is community. The living together, working together, sharing together, loving God and loving our neighbor, and living close to God in community so we can show our love for God.”

Who’s your community? How is community formed? I’ve seen recently in the news how disasters can create community. People come together to pitch in and help people they’ve lived next to for years but never met. Those extreme situations, like Hurricane Sandy remind us that we’re all connected. For myself, I’ve realized how I have a need to feel connected, to learn, to share my skills with others, to be a part of a community.

Cutting the cake at Sunny’s Surprise Baby Shower during one of our knitting sessions.

Two years ago I lived in New Haven for just 8 months, while my husband had a scholarship at Yale. Knowing my need for community, I set about looking for where I fit in. Almost right away I found a group of women who were also all looking for connections – spouses of international students.

We started a knitting club and we soon formed a tight network. People gave and received in this group, invited people over for dinner, helped each other learn English, looked over each other’s job applications. And this is what’s special about community – people give because they receive, and they receive because they give. That reciprocity and openness is the core power of community. We’re willing to open up to this flow in community.

Giving to Your Neighbor

I recently learned about a concept called Horizontal Giving – it describes the act of giving and receiving from your peers, as opposed to Vertical Giving, or receiving help from above. The study I read found that in North Carolina the giving that happened between people is so much more important for people’s day to day lives than their receiving from the government or even from organizations.

People described how they helped family members by giving to them, or how an elder in their community mentored a younger man. New immigrants to the US helped each other navigate the new bureaucracies.

One of the Latino participants shared: “You get to make friends here, and sometimes just a phone call or whatever – that’s a big help. In my case, since I don’t know many people around here, I find it very depressing just to be locked in [my house].” I can definitely relate to that. The researchers confirmed what we know, a simple act of reaching out encourages us, helps us, and brings us closer together in community.

Of course, community doesn’t just exist here, or at Yale, or in North Carolina. SIA, recognizes the strength in communities. Peter Laugharn of Firelight Foundation says, “Community is one of the strongest, well-distributed assets in Africa.” Communities in Africa are already giving and receiving and SIA supports that and gives grants to help those local projects get started.

Don’t just help; Serve

CIFORD Kenya engages support from the whole community to support education for girls.

SIA supports grassroots organizations to be the support for people in need in their community. And there’s so much need in Africa. There are basic needs (shelter, food, education) and there are basic emotional needs (recognition, encouragement, the need to be loved). SIA taps into communities and works to foster the horizontal giving – that peer to peer – that we know is already occurring, and which we know is powerful.

CIFORD Kenya and MAVISALO in Malawi are just two examples of people coming together, collectively addressing local needs, and working on giving at a horizontal level.

Why is giving in community so strong? Why does it make such an impact? In part, I think it’s because in a community, the interactions are all about serving others.

Rachel Naomi Remen who wrote Kitchen Table Wisdom, writes about the power of serving in her essay, “Helping, fixing or Serving?” She says, “Serving is different from helping. Helping is not a relationship between equals. A helper may see others as weaker than they are, needier than they are, and people often feel this inequity. … When we help, we become aware of our own strength. But when we serve, we don’t serve with our strength; we serve with ourselves, and we draw from all our experiences. Our limitations serve; our wounds serve; even our darkness can serve. … Serving makes us aware of our wholeness and its power.”

SIA doesn’t have Americans going over to help these communities in Africa. Remen, also says, “We can only serve that to which we are profoundly connected.”

And so I see that the way SIA works – empowering communities and community organizations – is so strong because it builds on that power of people serving those who they already know and who are close connections – their neighbors.

Working through community organizations like MAVISALO and CIFORD, SIA is able to serve, and I am able to serve, more honestly. We are not seeing Africans as a group weak, in need of helping or broken, in need of helping. We are seeing them as models of service – people acting to serve their neighbor, to make life better for the community.

Wholeness in Community

Singing in community. MAVISALO in Malawi.

Let’s rejoice, believing in the power of community. Let’s start recognizing the power of communities in Africa; that power from God in us that moves us to serve; that power from serving those who we are intrinsically connected to.

Serving is the wholeness in me serving the wholeness in another. Del Anderson, who started SIA at the age of 90, started the organization with the intention of serving the “whole person” – serving body, mind, and spirit. It was a bigger version of service, one which honors each person’s complexity and need. The way to help the world is to stop helping and instead use the power of community to reach and serve those families and children, and parents, and grandparents, in need.

Let’s remember the prayer, “Give us this day our daily bread.” Our daily bread. And as we pray this I encourage you to open us this season to notice how you give and receive. And why you give and receive. What communities are you active in? How are the needy (whatever their needs) served? How do you support community? Can you start seeing Africa as a network of communities serving their neighbors?

Local leaders are part of our kindness advantage too!

When you compare non-profits supporting development in Africa Spirit in Action is not at the top of the list for total amount of money given. Our grants can’t match the “small grants” at some large NGOs that range from $10,000-30,000.

That said, I think we have a lot of other points going for us, and I think that these points add up to more than just the amount we give away in grants each year.

“It’s very heartening to read your very kind & touching letter,” read the very unexpected opening to an email from Utkarsh Ghate in India. I was shocked not because the words themselves were stunning but because this came in reply to my email letting them know that SIA wouldn’t be able to fund their proposal.

This exchange brings to life our competitive advantage: kindness, respect, honoring people as individuals. 

At Spirit in Action, we have the time and the passion to connect with people, to write thoughtful responses to all emails, give feedback on proposals we can’t fund, to affirm their service to their community, and listen to the challenges they face.

Justus Aluka and a colleague in Kenya.

“We appreciated and highly acknowledged the content of your letter. Thanks for your encouragement and prayers of hope sent.” Such warm greetings were expressed in a recent email from Justus Aluka at Shirly Centre in Eldoret, Kenya. Putting this gratitude into action, his community group generously sent a 2000Ksh (around $25) donation to SIA. This unsolicited involvement and “paying forward” is another expression of the ripples of SIA’s work to put spirit and love into action.

So while other organizations may give more thousands of dollars, we give thousand times more encouragement and respect, acknowledging that these individuals, like Justus and Utkarsh, are the ones doing the front line work and facing those in dire need.

And our partners reflect this encouragement back to us: “p.s.” Utkarsh wrote, “Your bottom line is very impressive, let God make it true!” I always end my emails with “Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me” and I believe that honoring each person who reaches out to Spirit in Action is part of building that peace in the world.