In the News

The sight of your bank local branch in your neighborhood is so common that you don’t even pay attention to it. It’s there, period. But in Southern Sudan, a brick and mortar bank in a village was a first. The idea was supported by Five Talents, a non profit helping the Southern Sudanese people adjust from their ancestral pastoral life with educational programs. Deng took a loan and had his business booming in the central market of Lietnhom until skirmishes broke again.

Africa was the last place April Young thought she’d ever visit. An executive with an international finance company that lends money to start-up companies, she was a philanthropist who preferred to stay safe at home.

Five Talents regularly sponsors “Business as Mission” trips to the places it’s working. For April, the trip to Uganda and war-torn Rwanda in 2004 was a chance to stretch her faith. “I remember standing on the tarmac in Uganda and praying, ‘Okay, God, you put me here. I’m asking you to be here for me.’ And he was.”

Thomas Anei knows that partnership is critical to the success of rebuilding his war-torn country. In southwestern Sudan, he has seen how working together transformed Lietnhom, a rugged village 112 miles from the city of Wau.

My first morning in Africa! I could not wait to look out my window to finally see what Africa looked like! But I had no idea how quickly this trip would start impacting me.

The place that we stayed that first night was actually a really nice guest house that was run by the local Anglican church. It was a beautiful place! As I looked out my window that morning I saw some plush, green grass and amazing yellow and purple flowers everywhere. The atmosphere was different than what I was used to. In the heart of Nairobi I seemed to be in a secluded little sanctuary and I could tell there was much to see and explore outside the walls of our little church guest house.

In the Top 100 list, we included 19 tweeters to follow for microfinance information, however we know there are many, many more. So in during the past few months, we’ve connected with many individuals and organizations on Twitter invovled with microfinance and wanted to share our list with you.

Five Talents
http://twitter.com/fivetalents

I was only at the airport before this trip started to impact me. As I sat there waiting to board my first flight, I couldn’t help but to wonder what this mission trip was going to do to me. Would I come home a different person? How would my heart and my mind be affected? The only thing that I could manage to do was to study my notes for the lessons that I was going to be teaching once I arrived in Kenya.

LIETNHOM, SUDAN — For Deng Agei conflict is a part of life. After living through two decades of civil war in South Sudan, relative peace had come to his village of Lietnhom, where he opened a microbusiness and sold a variety of household goods and food items. But conflict found him once again when a clash between clans devastated his village last year.

In May of 2009 I joined a team of businessmen from around the United States as Five Talents International sent us out for a Business as Mission Trip to Kenya and Uganda. FTI is a faith-based organization that fights poverty with microfinance. They work in areas where there is extreme poverty and help to provide small (micro-) loans to people to help them start businesses that help them pull themselves out of poverty.

In the final moments before his death, Jesus gave his mother into a trusted disciple's keeping. Following his example, today we must take mothers around the world into our care.

This video is just a taste of some of the amazing praise and worship that I experienced with a couple hundred people in Uganda during my recent trip there. I love their energy and excitement to sign for their Lord! I still don’t understand the words at all, but I love the song…