This month has been packed with progress at each of our field sites. Here's a country-by-country look at the work our partners have been doing:
Meet Deepika Bara. This month she signed to take a TOLI loan to purchase a sewing machine. With the support of our social worker Ashish Subba, Deepika is launching a new business that will enable her to provide income for her young family and new hope for a whole community.
India: new clients and new hope
While political unrest slowed our efforts in the Duars region of India last year, we're happy to report that we now have 16 brand new clients in this region. Their businesses range from tailoring to a car repair shop to a chicken farm.
PRAY: For for these new clients as well as our social worker Ashish Subba, as he guides them in their budding businesses. Pray also for Board Member Lisa Hallock as she prepares to make a site visit in April in conjunction with First Presbyterian Church, Colorado Springs. The team will make sites visits as well as run a small business training course in the area.
Nicaragua: building a stellar team
Our social workers, like Junior, above, are crucial to the success of our work, and they wear many hats: mentor, coach, loan officer, and discipler.
Meet Junior, our new social worker in Puerto Cabezas, who will work with clients here. He is a translator (speaks English, Miskito, Spanish), plays drums in worship, and preaches in the local church when needed. His personal ministry includes jail ministry and he has a calling for evangelism to recovering addicts. He loves to play and coach baseball and he has a wife, 4 kids, and 6 grandkids. We're so excited to have Junior onboard!
While our partner committee in Puerto Cabezas is busy receiving loan applications, Junior is conducting interviews with applicants at their homes. By next month, the first TOLI loans will be granted.
PRAY: For the Lord to direct our committee and field staff here as they learn the ropes of our program. That TOLI would become a catalyst for economic and spiritual transformation in this community.
Egypt: multiplying through partnership
Our new social worker Mario (center) with the Pastor Amir and Abd el Massieh of Haggana church outside of Cairo.
Our new partnership with Heliopolis Evangelical Church is producing amazing fruit. Through their missions program and a group of core volunteers, the TOLI microloan program is being planted in several new sites around Cairo. Heliopolis is becoming a hub for TOLI in Egypt, allowing us to multiply in coordination with their church-planting efforts as well as streamline our program in Egypt overall.
PRAY: For founder Emad Yassa who's traveling to Egypt this week to work with our TOLI committee there, make field visits, as well as evaluate a possible new partnership in Jordan. Pray that God would allow TOLI to be a tool for these budding churches to effectively reach, serve and minister to their communities.
Kenya: strengthening savings groups
Our clients in Mai-A-Ihii, Kenya, are all part of a peer-led savings group (SACCO), where members pool their resources and act as an informal bank. For these women, financial services — such as savings accounts or loans — would otherwise be out of reach. It's exciting to see how the savings group and our microloan program are working in tandem, helping women save, grow enterprise, and support each other. From March 12-19, a group of TOLI leaders from the US and Egypt will be in Kenya to hold a small business training course for these women, as well as continue developing our second site in Chuka, Central Kenya.
Pray: For the upcoming small business training course in Mai-i-Ihii in March.
>> Our Kenya program is growing fast! Can you help? Please consider a gift to support our expanding program:
Albania: creating a tool for ministry
A recent long-distance Albania team meeting.
We are encouraged by the zeal of the young church in Korce, Albania, to serve the poor in their community and share the Gospel with neighbors. Our partners here are eager to use TOLI as a vehicle for ministry, and Pastor Plator, social worker Niko, and US friends Beth and Bill Bennett are working hard developing our program here.
Pray: For the committee in Korce as they work through local red tape as we set up our site here, and for Beth and Bill as they travel back to Albania after a month-long hiatus in the States.
Get involved
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