Our partners are cooking up big change in their communities and there are so many inspiring stories, photos, and quotes to share! I couldn’t fit them all in the Spring & Summer 2013 Newsletter, so today’s blog is a bit of newsletter leftover stew…

(The newsletter went off to the presses yesterday but you can download a PDF COLOR copy here today.)

1. Women Starting Businesses in Kenya

SIA Small Business Fund local coordinator in Kenya, Dennis Kiprop, is excited about the new cohort of 5 women-led business groups:

“I thank God for such an opportunity to serve and train these small business groups. The greatest joy is to see them grow in God and be able to support their families in the long run with the businesses they are doing. Most of them are the key providers in their own families. Thank you for the great support, prayers, and love.”

Rose and Salina fill out their business plan after attending a training session led by local SIA Coordinator Dennis Kiprop.

Goats are kept in elevated pens in Malawi.

2. Forestry Project in Malawi

The front page of the newsletter has a story about 5 Small Business Fund groups in Malawi that are collaborating to start a forestry project.

The tree-planting business will not only help reforest the area and help the soil retain more water, the trees are also important for infrastructure in the rural Manyamula village. Tree poles are used for building houses and also for penning goats.

This photo shows the elevated goat pen which keeps the animals safe and allows the owners to collect manure for their gardens!

3. Short (and important) Supporter Survey

We want to hear your preferences! We have a short 9-question survey for our supporters. Will you tell us how you want to hear from us and what you like about SIA? Take the survey here. Thank you!

4. Memories of Del’s Encouragement

I asked Camily Wedende, a solar cooker entrepreneur in Kenya, about what words of inspiration from Del still stuck with him. (See the newsletter of how Camily is helping others promote solar cooking in Kenya.)

“Del used to write about letting go. To let go is not to regret the past, but to grow and live for the future.

To let go is not to adjust everything to my desires but to take each day as it comes and to cherish the moment.

To let go is not to deny, but to accept.

To let go is not to fix, but to be supportive.”

5. Giant Cucumber!

I LOVE this photo of SIA local coordinator Canaan Gondwe (Malawi) with the giant cucumber that grew in his community with seeds sent by our dedicated volunteer, Aileen Gillem.

Seeds were given to needy families in the community for them to use in their kitchen gardens (small garden plots with many types of vegetables growing). Cucumbers, tomatoes, and onions all thrived, supplementing the staple food, maize (corn).

The question “what does Spirit in Action do?” has many different answers. The thing is, Spirit in Action has two distinct approaches to empowering others.

Small Business Fund

Hastings and Ruth started a brick-making business in Malawi.

On one hand is the Small Business Fund (SBF). Started in 2005, the Small Business Fund is a SIA-specific program where all grantees, whether they are in Uganda, Kenya, Malawi, or Nigeria, go through the same training program of business and communication skill development. The local coordinators work closely with me and consult with each other as they implement this program in their communities.

In the SBF, we are directly giving $150 to families to help them take on a new livelihood and improve their lives. (For more about how the SBF works, see these FAQs.)

Community Grants

On the other hand, Spirit in Action is also a traditional grant-maker, like a community foundation or a family foundation, giving grants to grassroots organizations throughout the world that will implement their own programs.

These grassroots organizations (also called “community-based organizations”) are already working to eliminate poverty, grow more food, or stop the spread of HIV/AIDS, etc. in their community. Think of these groups as similar to your local PTA, community gardening association, local health clinic, or save the shore kind of group. They are concerned citizens who want to make things better for their neighbors and for the community as a whole.

Tanya and student volunteers at SIA poultry project house in Kitale, Kenya.

The small grants, ranging from $500-4,000, support a wide variety of local solutions for the challenges that each community faces. Past SIA grants have start community gardens and collaborative farming efforts, poultry projects, bio-intensive garden trainings, girl’s empowerment workshops, and a savings and loans cooperative.

Why don’t we just fund one type of project, like building wells? Because we’ve seen that 1) solutions brought forth from the community are more effective and quickly gain community buy-in; and 2) empowerment is about trusting communities to know what will best address their problems.

Sometimes a well might be the answer, other times the answer might be water tanks to catch rainwater.

Of course, we don’t just fund every proposal that comes in; I take time to review proposals, develop relationships, give feedback, ask questions, and pray for guidance. (Read more about choosing partners here.)

Common Principle

Sharing the Gift of a pig in Uganda.

Even though we have two methods of serving communities in Africa, one principle brings the two techniques together, and that is Sharing the Gift. This pay-it-forward initiative is key to both the Small Business Fund and community grants. It’s implemented in different ways: for example, tithing business profits in the Small Business Fund, or creating an emergency relief fund by a Community Grant group. In both, the idea of blessing others as we have been blessed and giving generously to others is central to SIA’s vision of change.

If you have more questions about what we do or how we do it, leave a comment or email me (Tanya) at admin@godsspiritinaction.org!

It could have been a scene from my own visit to in Kenya in 2011 – the dusty roads, the matatus (taxi vans) with hawkers hanging out of the windows, children singing and dancing with glee – but actually, it was just the setting of the beautiful, uplifting film, The First Grader.

Stunning scenery in Meru National Park in Kenya.

The movie, from 2011, is based on the true story of Kimani Maruge, an 84-year old man who hears in 2003 that the Kenyan government is now offering “free primary education for all” and decides to take them up on the offer!

See, Maruge has an important letter from the Office of the President and he wants to learn to read so that he can read it himself. And he overcomes many challenges from the community and haunting memories to keep studying and learning.

Throughout the film we see flashbacks to a traumatic past when Maruge was held in the British Detention Camps along with other members of the Mau Mau movement, who fought against the British in 1952-60. (This is a complicated history! For more about the Mau Mau Uprisings, read the Wikipedia page.)

Seeing Kenya

Hens in Rose’s chicken coup. She bought 6 chickens with her SIA grant and now has over 60!

The movie, filmed in Kenya with local school children acting as Maruge’s classmates, shows so many typical scenes from the country.

You see the use of cell phones (which are very common throughout Kenya, and are now helping people transfer cash electronically; read more HERE), and the ubiquitous chickens, goats, and dogs running around people’s houses. There’s also the mandatory reference to Obama, the Kenyan who moved into the White House.

We also see a wide variety of homes, from huts with inside cooking fires and no electricity, to brick houses with tin roofs and barred windows, to middle-class apartments in Nairobi.

Valuing Teachers

A mural on the Samro School, run by Rhoda Teimuge, in Eldoret.

The First Grader shows the teacher Jane being frustrated with lack of desks. But it also shows her being able to achieve teaching with few materials and in a wooden building. Sometimes it’s not the infrastructure that matters most with schools, it’s the teachers. Jane is engaged, passionate, loves the children, and gives generously.

Sometimes, with the enthusiasm for building schools in Kenya, we forget the importance and centrality of teacher training, pay, and good working conditions.

Accessing “Free” Education

For me, the movie was an important reminder of the value placed on education in Kenya and the barriers to even access the “free” primary education. Students must buy uniforms and shoes and bring pencils and other supplies. They may either have to walk long distances or pay for a bus or bike ride to school.

So, it’s understandable that many families who receive Spirit in Action Small Business Fund grants to start a business, use their first profits to send children back to school.

In Kenya, we visited Rose Ayabei, who received a SIA Small Business Fund $150 grant in 2009 to start a poultry business. In 2011 she had over 60 chickens! She told us that she dedicated to keeping the business working so that she can pay for her children to continue attending school. The boys walk 2km on muddy roads to attend school.

Maruge knew the importance of education, and overcame prejudice and ignorance, and his past struggles, to patiently learn to read and share that importance of learning with the other children in the class. Let’s help more families send their children – boys and girls – to school, making a better future for Kenya.

Rose Ayabei’s children

It used to be common sense that micro-loans were the only way to ensure the sustainability of a micro-finance program and that the act of paying back the loan would instill the sense of “ownership” in the grant recipients. How could a micro-grant – labeled a “hand out” – do anything but create a sense of entitlement on the part of the grantee? We’ve thought that loans were better than grants because they promoted long-term, individual responsibility; but in some markets, loans wreak havoc with indebtedness, hostile payment collectors and inflexible repayment schedules. Grants, unlike loans, can create independence and cultivate sustainable development in a community.

A new pottery business in Uganda.

In 2006, just as the Grameen Bank and Kiva were becoming household names, there was a rush to start new micro-finance organisations and benevolently provide money to the poor. Unfortunately, those funds come at a great cost and with inconclusive effects. Interest rates of 40-100% of the loan principle and travel costs to get to and from the bank mean that people are stuck from the moment they get the money.

Why grants?

A loan is just a financial arrangement in the business of making money for a bank, but a grant creates space for positive relationships and an empowered individual. Spirit in Action provides $150 micro-grants to groups of 3-5 people throughout communities on the African continent. Instead of a debt-collector, we have local coordinators who train grant recipients in business planning, marketing, and basic accounting. The grant cohort also forms a support group.

Receiving a $150 grant – rather than a loan – means that the first $150 in profit from their successful enterprise can help group members go to school, improve their house, or pay for medical care, and is not used to pay back donors. And through our program, some of the additional profits are gifted to others in the community, generating goodwill and further development on the local level. (Read one family’s success story here.)

We are Grant Recipients

Sharing the Gift with a cash grant in the community (Malawi).

Our model for micro-grant sustainability reflects our home-office organisational practices. We recognise that since Spirit in Action relies purely on donations from individuals for our funding, we also are grant recipients. Our supporters don’t ask us to pay them back – they ask us to pay the gift forward to help people as defined in our mission and programmatic plans. By asking our Small Business Fund grant recipients to pay it forward to a neighbor or community member rather than paying the organisation back, we are asking them to do only what we ourselves do. Paying it forward starts with our donors and passes on to many more throughout the world.

Becoming a Giver

Our paying it forward program, Sharing the Gift, suggests to grant recipients that they have received the gift of a grant from Spirit in Action and asks them, “How can you share this gift with others?” The actual form of sharing varies among groups, with input from the local coordinators. Some tithe a percentage of profits toward future groups, others contribute seeds or baby animals to a new group, and sometimes business groups come together to support a project that benefits the whole community.

Sharing the Gift of a pig in Uganda.

After receiving a grant, people are empowered to be givers in their communities. Fundraisers know that people receive genuine happiness from giving to others; the Small Business Fund and Sharing the Gift enable people who have grown up with very little to have more to share with others and to be respected for their gifts to neighbors.

Unlike loans, which create an immediate indebtedness in the community, grants and a “paying it forward” mentality make development sustainable in the communities where we have funded small businesses. Even without additional grants, local growth comes from small business owners themselves. The development of their community originates with their desire to pay forward what they have received. Grants are not a hand out; they enable people to invest in their communities in a grassroots manner.

**I originally wrote this post for the WhyDev blog. WhyDev is an online community for individuals passionate about development, aid, and other global issues.

We have some exciting updates to share with you about Spirit in Action’s ongoing programs!

First, positive reports from the business leaders in Nawangisa Village, Uganda, sharing about their new enterprises started this year:

Ms. Tabisa Jese; Mat Making – “The demand has been higher than what we could supply! Now, I can provide better food for my family.”

Beautiful baskets in Uganda

Ms. Nankwanga Joy; Basket Making – “We have all participated effectively,” Joy says about the family business. A total of 8 people have benefited directly from the business and they have been able to repair their home with profits!

Ms. Magida Moses; Bricks Making – “We earned $50 in profit. Now we can take the children back to school.”

What amazing testaments to the power of a small enterprise to improve lives in a rural village in Uganda! Photos are in the mail from Uganda now and I’ll post them on the website and our Facebook page when I get them!

Girls Learning

Tanya meets with girls who have graduated from the CIFORD workshops. July 2011

A generous grant to Spirit in Action from the Charles Wentz Carter Foundation will go to assist CIFORD Kenya conduct more Girls Empowerment Workshops! We are so grateful for their support, which helps SIA serve this community organization in Kenya.

The Foundation said they were really impressed with the report last spring and so they are pleased to continue support of this great organization! A workshop for 150 girls is planned for this month. [Read more about CIFORD’s programs in our Spring newsletter.]

Upon hearing the good news, one of SIA’s Advisory Board Members shared her enthusiasm for CIFORD’s community work: “We are thrilled about the CIFORD project. Seeing that girls have the opportunity for an education in East Africa is especially dear to our hearts. To keep girls in school gives them a world of choices unavailable to those who aren’t able to attend. The project reports are so inspiring.”

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Searching around for the perfect gift? How about honoring your friend or family member with a gift to SIA? It’s a gift that – through our Sharing the Gift initiative – keeps giving and giving…