Join the Fight Against Poverty on Five Talents Sunday!

Lift villages out of crushing poverty, create jobs and transform lives in the world’s poorest regions – by helping your church participate in “Five Talents Sunday” on Nov. 16 (or any Sunday of your choosing!).

Call us at (800) 670-6355 to see how your church can make a lasting difference in the lives of the poor – as Nov. 16 is the date that churches around the world preach on Christ’s “Parable of the Five Talents” (Matthew 25:14-30). Join the nationwide discussion on how we can all fight poverty.

Sadly, almost half of the world now struggles for survival on less than $2 a day. And, many of us despair at the enormity of this challenge.

The poor have gifts and talents, and Christian microlending is proving to be a very effective way to lift one village at a time out of poverty.

With small loans of just $50, we’re helping villagers with small businesses – like purchasing chickens to sell eggs. Our donations help, help and help again as these small investments are repaid and loaned out again to others. See how your church can provide a lasting hand up, instead of just a hand out. Receive the Five Talents Sunday Kit, which includes:

Sermon Resource Notes
Poster
Bulletin inserts
Bulletin cover
Children’s activities (Hard copies are available by contacting our office.)
Sunday School lessons
Background information on Five Talents’ spiritual and monetary investments
Creative suggestions on how all churches can participate including an International Dinner Cookbook
A list of Immediate Needs

Click on the links above to download electronic versions of the Five Talents Sunday Kit.To receive your FREE Five Talents Sunday Kit, please call (800) 670-6355 or email Laura Boafo at lauraboafo@fivetalents.org.

Virtual March for the MDGs on July 24

On Thursday, July 24, more than 600 Anglican bishops, their spouses and other faith leaders from around the United Kingdom will march through central London on a Walk of Witness -- a symbolic moment of solidarity and coming together for the fulfilment of the Millennium Development Goals to reflect to the world God's desire for justice and concern for the poor.
Now every Episcopalian can "march" with them.

The Episcopal Public Policy Network and Episcopalians for Global Reconciliation are sponsoring a "Virtual March for the MDGs" to coincide with the Lambeth Conference walk. The aim is the same. Only instead of marching through the streets of London, they're urging people to march virtually by filling Congressional inboxes in Washington, D.C., with emails demanding our leaders to share our commitment to achieving the MDGs and making poverty history.

Joining up is easy -- for individuals and congregations.
1) Between now and July 24, individuals can go to episcopal.grassroots.com/virtualmarch and sign up. On July 24, they'll get an email with a link to click and take an MDG-related advocacy action (the precise action will be decided in the coming weeks. EPPN will choose the most effective action based on the status of various pieces of anti-poverty legislation before Congress). The whole process will take no more than 3 minutes each time.

2) After July 1, congregations can go to www.e4gr.org/virtualmarch.html to download a brief liturgy that can be inserted in their Sunday Eucharist on July 20 and/or July 27 as well as special service leaflets for each Sunday so they can stand in solidarity with the Lambeth Conference's commitment to the MDGs and ending extreme poverty. Bulletin inserts for that Sunday will also be available at that time.

"This is an opportunity for the American Church to show we stand with our bishops at Lambeth in two tangible, active ways," said the Rev. Mike Kinman, executive director of Episcopalians for Global Reconciliation. "Through our prayer and advocacy, we will show that we speak with one voice in our commitment to seek and serve Christ in the poorest of God's children."

"Standing together with the Bishops at Lambeth we are saying with ONE voice -- now is the time -- today is the day to take one more step on the path to eradicating global poverty," said Mary Getz, grassroots coordinator for the Episcopal Office of Government Relations. "Just past the halfway point for the MDGs, it is more important than ever for us to speak with one voice to our governments' leaders."

Five Talents' Top Summer Reading Picks

Summer is upon us, and now's the perfect time to crack open a book. To help guide your selections, I'm suggesting my Five Talents' Top Summer Reading Picks:

(If you are looking for a great summer read and you buy books online, please consider using Good Shop. By purchasing these books through Good Shop, you'll also be financially supporting Five Talents. Just enter "Five Talents International" as your preferred charity, and click on the Barnes & Noble link. When you make your book purchase, 2.5% of your purchase price will be donated to Five Talents!)


What Can One Person Do?: Faith to Heal a Broken World
By Sabina Alkire and Edmund Newell

What Can One Person Do? confronts a poverty-stricken world, and with clarity of purpose, offers practical steps to create lasting change. Global poverty can be reduced through a series of achievable objectives: the eight Millennium Developemnt goals agreed to by the international community at the Millennium Summit in 2000. World leaders and faith communities have adopted the MDGs, as well as the ideas found within this book -- for the authors demonstrate that as shared vision grows and as these goals are accomplished, human communities shall indeed flourish.

The Price of a Dream: the Story of the Grameen Bank
By David Bornstein

This book is the compelling story of the Grameen Bank. Founded by Muhammad Yunus in Bangladesh in 1976, the Grameen Bank has extended small loans for self-employment to more than two million women villagers and has helped lift hundreds of thousands out of poverty. The Grameen Bank's "trickle up" approach has inspired the creation of hundreds of microcredit programs around the world and helped to reshape international development policy.




Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust
By Immaculee Ilibagiza

In 1994, Immaculee Ilibagiza's idyllic world was ripped apart as Rwanda descended into a bloody genocide. Immaculee's family was brutally murdered during a killing spree that lasted three months and claimed the lives of nearly a million Rwandans.

Incredibly, Immaculee survived the slaughter. For 91 days, she and seven other women huddled silently together in the cramped bathroom of a local pastor while hundreds of machete-wielding killers hunted for them.

It was during those endless hours of unspeakable terror that Immaculee discovered the power of prayer, eventually shedding her fear of death and forging a profound and lasting relationship with God. She emerged from her bathroom hideout having discovered the meaning of truly unconditional love -- a love so strong she was able seek out and forgive her family's killers. The triumphant story of this remarkable young woman's journey through the darkness of genocide will inspire anyone whose life has been touched by fear, suffering and loss.

We've made it!

It's been a while since I've posted here ... but that only means that things have been super busy in the office!

Throughout the month of May we were getting ready for two big events. Our board meeting and board reception, which were the first week of June, and our 5th annual X-OUT Poverty Golf Classic, which was last Thursday. It was a fantastic event, and I'm so thankful to all the sponsors, volunteers, donors, participants and committee members who made it happen! Well done and a huge thanks from the Five Talents office!

We are now heading into the summer season and getting ready for GAFCON and Lambeth, we'll be launching our Five Talents Sunday event in a few weeks (more about this later), and we're working on the finishing touches for our 2007 annual report.

More later...

The Inspiration

There is a picture on the bookshelf overlooking my desk of a Haitian man standing on the crest of a mountain with a bright blue sky as the backdrop. His hands are on his hips in a determined stance as he looks across the peaks and valleys of his beloved country.

Fr. Andre Lozama, the Haitian in the picture, had reason to look determined. There was work to be done, a lot of work. He was in charge of pastoring five Episcopal missions in the rural southern region of Haiti near the town of Les Cayes. Each mission had a school, food program and church building with operating costs that well exceeded each congregation’s meager resources.

Despite this, he was never deterred. He was an energetic visionary with a practical side that knew how to put those visions into actions. He was always thinking of new ways to do things. On one of his rare trips to the United States, he once asked his host to stop the car so he could talk to a farmer who was out plowing the fields. Fr. Andre and the slightly surprised farmer chatted for an hour or so about agricultural techniques he might be able to apply in Haiti. Fr. Lozama didn’t know much about farming, but he knew that many of his congregation were subsistence farmers. He told his host that any bit of information that could help those farmers feed their families was worth asking about.

He preached the gospel on Sundays and lived it the other six days, rarely taking a rest.

And that’s how he died - working.

He was making the rounds of his missions before finally taking a much-needed vacation. He had diabetes and high blood pressure, and he had battled cancer into submission several years before. His doctor had told him he needed to take a rest.

When I gaze at the photo, I imagine him traveling up into the mountains to the remote villages to make sure everybody and everything was taken care of before he left for vacation. I am sure he was looking forward to spending time with his wife, Edith, and his children, who lived in Port-au-Prince most of the year.

But one night, a blood clot unexpectedly formed in his leg. One of his friends put him in his truck and sped into the darkness of the night over the unpaved and bumpy road to Port-au-Prince. I imagine, too, Fr. Andre’s pain. It must have been excruciating and having to be a passenger in a truck that was careening over rocks and skidding around large potholes must have made the pain almost intolerable.

Fr. Andre never saw his family again. He died before his friend reached Port-au-Prince. An unceremonious death for someone I consider a living saint. I think all saints should die performing God’s work. Fr. Andre had that privilege.

His example made me determined that one day I would find a way to ensure those pastors and priests on the frontlines on the war against injustice and poverty were not fighting a lonely battle.

By Craig Cole, the executive director of Five Talents International, an Anglican microfinance nonprofit, a member of Diocese of Virginia's Mission Commission and an EGR board member.