Indonesia

Over the next three weeks, you'll have to decide on gifts for a select group of friends and family members.

Fortunately, we've got a gift idea that we think you'll love: Instead of buying them a Starbucks gift card, or a tree ornament, send your loved ones a Five Talents e-card.

Here's how it works:

• Visit our eGift Catalog and pick from among the 10 e-card options. Prices range from $25 to $50. Every e-card features beautiful photography that captures an aspect of Five Talents' work in a particular country. Your purchase will count as a donation for that particular country and program.
• At the end of your transaction, you will be prompted to enter the e-mail addresses of either 5 individuals (for every $25 e-card) or 10 individuals (for every $50 e-card). Each person will receive an e-card explaining that a gift was made in his or her honor towards Five Talents' work in, for example, savings group formation in South Sudan (see the above e-card image of the "One Nation" savings group in South Sudan).

Your e-card purchases are tax-deductible, and they are a great way to spread holiday cheer and share the joy of giving with your loved ones.

With every e-card purchase, you are contributing to the transformation of lives in some of the most under-served communities in the world.

Click here to send a set of Five Talents e-cards today!

If you've been waiting for an opportunity to introduce a few friends to Five Talents, December 5 is the day.

Participate in the last matching gift opportunity of 2012 by inviting three friends to join you in donating $5 to Five Talents. Your combined $20 will be matched by a generous donor and become $40.

Your advocacy for Five Talents is critical as we seek to reach even more women and men in places like South Sudan, Myanmar and Indonesia.

Five Talents equips, trains and empowers women and men who find themselves struggling to sustain a micro-enterprise. By telling your friends and loved ones about Five Talents and its mission, you give us increased credibility.

Please consider sharing this blog post on Facebook, or sending the link via e-mail to a few loved ones who share your passion for the global poor.

You may also want to share this video that goes inside our program in Indonesia. It's a great introduction to the work that Five Talents is doing all over the world.

Partners:

• GERHATI, East Jakarta, Indonesia
• All Saints Church in Jakarta, Anglican Diocese of Singapore

Program Type and Services:

• Christian Microfinance Institution: “Credit Led”

GERHATI Foundation offers two loan products to its clients. The first is the Trust Bank Loan Program. Loan sizes range from $53 to $214. The second loan product, Small Business Loan Program, is available to existing GERHATI clients who improve their business, are diligent in repayment, and finish the Trust Bank Loan Program. These loan sizes range from $267 to $535.

GERHATI provides a client training program for clients who form a group in order to obtain a Trust Bank loan. Before group members take out a loan product, GERHATI staff addresses topics such as character building, leadership training, and how to become an organization.

Training Focus:

• Micro-enterprise development
• Self development: marketing a business, money management, cooking lessons
• Community services and development: building a clean, healthy, smart community
• Spiritual development: morning devotions, weekly prayer and fasting
• Healthy family card program: health knowledge via socialization

The Community

GERHATI Foundation operates in the Bekasi Area (West Java Province and Cipayung) in East Jakarta, Indonesia in a predominantly Muslim context.  With a population of 2.5 million, it is in the East Regency of the capital. For several years, the project has maintained three core programs that provide financial support, training, and technical assistance to poor entrepreneurs.  The programs serve as an outreach tool to neighboring Muslim communities in order to build relationships in an often tense and hostile environment.  In addition, the program provides much-needed jobs for Christians who sometimes face employment discrimination.

The Program

This Christian micro-enterprise development (CMED) program in Jakarta is improving not only the livelihood of the very poor congregations of the Anglican Church in Jakarta, but is also reaching out to other needy members of the communities that surround each church. The program focuses its efforts on two communities in Jakarta: Bekasi and Cipayung.  The majority of the recipients are women at the lowest income levels.  It provides the financial and technical assistance necessary to help participants maintain and develop their businesses.

A new foundation entitled GERHATI has been created to carry out this mission. GERHATI, an acronym in the local language for “Gateway of Hope for Human Transformation,” was conceived and developed jointly by Five Talents International, in partnership with the Anglican Diocese of Singapore and the expatriate Anglican community of All Saints Church in Jakarta in 2002.  The GERHATI Foundation, located in Bekasi, Java, is registered as a cooperative and started operations in April 2005.

In 2010, GERHATI offered a Spiritual Development Program for Gerhati clients who are Christians which is supported by Gereja Anglikan Indonesia (GAI). The program was divided into 9 Bible Study meetings, 2 seminars, and one family gathering.  The events were conducted by 2 pastors from GAI on a monthly basis and were offered to Gerhati clients who live in the Cipayung Area.

GERHATI also regularly partners with local doctors to set up temporary free health clinics for the poor in Bekasi and Cipayung.

The Need

The local church provides spiritual development, using Bible studies based on the parable of the talents. The hope is that the church will be seen as a light into the community, and that the micro-enterprise development program, through its outreach, will help the church to grow.

Five Talents hopes to expand the program to reach 6,594 clients by the end of 2012.

We'd appreciate your continued prayers for this transformative program. Please help us expand our work in Indonesia either by making a one-time donation or by signing up to "Walk with Us" as a recurring donor. A monthly gift of $10 will transform up to five lives.

Are you on Facebook? Become an online advocate for Five Talents! Our online "flash drive" has everything you need to promote the work and mission of Five Talents.

Updated December 2012

This holiday season, make a gift that will transform the lives of women and men in places like South Sudan, Myanmar, Indonesia and Peru.

With the Five Talents E-Gift Catalog you can invest in a program of your choice, such as savings group formation in South Sudan, or business training in Myanmar. You can then send your friends and family an exclusive e-card that reflects your donation!

Purchases from the Five Talents E-Gift Catalog are tax-deductible and come with an e-card that you can e-mail to as many as 10 loved ones.

Let's say you planned to make a donation to Five Talents for Thanksgiving. If you make your gift through the E-Gift Catalog, you can choose the program you want to support – for example, our savings-led program in South Sudan.

Since 2002, Five Talents has been working in under-served communities outside of Jakarta, Indonesia with its local partner, GERHATI. In this video, filmed and produced for Five Talents by David Middleton, you'll get an inside look at the transformation that is taking place in the capital city of the world's fourth most populous country.

GERHATI, an acronym in the local language for "Gateway of Hope for Human Transformation," was conceived and developed jointly by Five Talents, in partnership with the Anglican Diocese of Singapore and the expatriate Anglican community of All Saints Church in Jakarta in 2002. The GERHATI Foundation, located just outside of Jakarta in Bekasi, Java, is registered as a cooperative and started operations in April 2005.

Five Talents and its partners provide not only micro-loans, but also business skills training, spiritual support, free health care opportunities and even workshops on personal care. As with all of Five Talents' programs, people of any or no faith may participate.

In 2013, Five Talents plans to expand into another Jakarta community where traditional money lenders have annualized interest rates as high at 800 percent.

We're excited to share with you our 2011-2012 Annual Report for the fiscal year running from July 1, 2011 to June 30, 2012. Click here to download the PDF.

In the report, you'll find all of the latest financial figures and program statistics, as well as stories, photos and highlights from every one of Five Talents' programs.

The report also features beautiful illustrations from one of our volunteers, Laura Bauder. So a great big thank-you to Laura, who also took on the task of designing the report.

Take a moment to look at this photo of a boy in Jakarta, Indonesia. You might just see yourself.

For me, it was the small toy section of the grocery store that my mom used to shop at on Saturday mornings. I'd spend 30 minutes picking through the Hot Wheels cars and then bring one back to my mom's cart, in hopes she'd let me drop it in. For you, it might have been a Sears catalog or a storefront window that mezmerized you as a child and spoke to you in your dreams.

For this boy, barefoot in a Jakarta slum, it was a treasure trove of plastic toys tacked to a sidewalk stall that held his gaze.

I'm trying to guess the particular item that has caught his attention. Is it the tiny fishing pole with pink and green fishes? Is it one of the race cars? The fighter jet? The "Monopoli" game?

The photo, taken by Five Talents consultant David Middleton, is a good reminder about the families that Five Talents seeks to serve in the developing world. They make speak a different language, navigate a different culture and lead altogether different lives, but they are in so many other ways just like you and me.

Nearly every week we post photos, stories and interviews showing just how Five Talents is fighting poverty, creating jobs and transforming lives in the developing world.

But the truth is, we're just one factor in the equation of success that is reflected in this blog. There are others: God, of course; our partners on the ground in places like South Sudan, Myanmar and Indonesia; the considerable creativity and resilience of our micro-entrepreneurs; and also -- you.

Today marks the soft launch of our new "Walk with Us" campaign. In the coming weeks, we'll be asking you to participate in several exciting online social media campaigns.

We'll invite you to become a recurring donor, where just $10 per month can provide loan capital, financial services, business training and spiritual mentoring for up to five micro-entrepreneurs.

Throughout the 2012-2013 fiscal year, we'll also be asking you to pray for the campaign's success. Your faithful prayers will be crucial.