Peru

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.

Last Friday, we invited you to help us spread the word about an awesome matching gift opportunity. Every $5 donation made on October 5 was matched by a generous donor – in the hopes that we could use the offer to introduce Five Talents to new friends.

Thanks to you, October 5 was a huge success. By giving, "Liking" our Facebook posts, and e-mailing your friends, you helped us to raise over $1,000!

Think about it: In an impoverished country like Burundi, $1,000 covers the cost of providing loan capital, savings opportunities and business skills training for about 40 women and men!

We as a team feel so blessed by your support. Thank you for encouraging us. And thank you for helping us serve hard-working micro-entrepreneurs in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

Happy Fiveday!

OK, so maybe your Google calendar or iPhone's Siri didn't alert you to this special day. (Technology isn't perfect, after all.) But that's why we're here – to let you know that on the 5th of every month we invite friends and followers (and even total strangers!) to support one of our programs by donating – that's right – $5 to Five Talents.

Five bucks may not seem like much. We here in the US can spend $5 so easily -- on a venti Frappuccino at Starbucks, on a hand-made greeting card at Papyrus, or on a cross-town Metro fare.

But today we're inviting you to spend $5 on something that will recycle itself and eventually touch scores of families struggling to lift themselves out of poverty.

All donations received today will go towards our work in Peru, where women like Narcisa are embarking on a journey out of poverty by setting up a small businesses, called micro-enterprises.

A one-time gift as small as $5 is re-used again and again in the developing world. Jobs are created. Lives are transformed.

Were you to sit down with the micro-entrepreneurs in our programs, many would tell you inspiring stories about how they have provided for themselves and their family. Rarely, however, would their stories begin all the way back in childhood.

Narcisa began her journey of hope years ago as a young girl in Cono Sur, Peru – on the bed of a truck, between boxes of cargo.

Little Narcisa's aunt had been abusing her and forcing her to do menial tasks while telling her father, who struggled with alcoholism and lived in a distant town, that she was sending his daughter to a good school.

"Not a day went by that my aunt did not mistreat me," Narcisa told us.

When a neighbor who witnessed the abuse offered to help reunite Narcisa with her father, she warily agreed. The neighbor then convinced a truck driver to carry Narcisa out of town, and so the little girl climbed into the back of the truck and prayed that she could find her dad – and that he'd be sober and willing to take her in.

When they reached the city where her father worked, the driver dropped off Narcisa two blocks from the address she had given him. He told her that if her father was not there, she should wait for him right where he had dropped her off. Then, at four in the afternoon, he would pass by to pick her up. Before driving off, he gave her a little money so she could buy a meal.

Narcisa remembers the next moments with a great deal of heartache.

Were you to sit down with the micro-entrepreneurs in our programs, many would tell you inspiring stories about how they have provided for themselves and their family. Rarely, however, would their stories begin all the way back in childhood.

Narcisa began her journey of hope years ago as a young girl in Cono Sur, Peru – on the bed of a truck, between boxes of cargo.

Little Narcisa's aunt had been abusing her and forcing her to do menial tasks while telling her father, who struggled with alcoholism and lived in a distant town, that she was sending his daughter to a good school.

"Not a day went by that my aunt did not mistreat me," Narcisa told us.

When a neighbor who witnessed the abuse offered to help reunite Narcisa with her father, she warily agreed. The neighbor then convinced a truck driver to carry Narcisa out of town, and so the little girl climbed into the back of the truck and prayed that she could find her dad – and that he'd be sober and willing to take her in.

When they reached the city where her father worked, the driver dropped off Narcisa two blocks from the address she had given him. He told her that if her father was not there, she should wait for him right where he had dropped her off. Then, at four in the afternoon, he would pass by to pick her up. Before driving off, he gave her a little money so she could buy a meal.

Narcisa remembers the next moments with a great deal of heartache.

She got out of the truck and ran to where she thought her father worked. Upon arriving, she asked for her father, and they told her that "the man over there" had the same name as her father.

She walked up to the mysterious man both with rage for all that he had done to hurt her family, and also with hope. She stood in front of him and said, "I am your daughter, Narcisa."

The man looked at her and, seeing her clothes in tatters and her hair dirty and full of lice, he suddenly broke into tears. He hugged her and they both wept for joy.

This was just the first leg of a journey that has led Narcisa, now a 66-year-old grandmother, out of poverty. She went on to educate herself and is now the treasurer of a savings and loan group funded by Five Talents. She is on her sixth loan cycle and runs a small beauty products business out of her home while also caring for three of her grandchildren.

Narcisa said she always tells her story to her grandchildren so they understand the kind of life she lived and how, despite it all, she was able to get an education and have her own micro-business.

They always end up crying – not from sadness but because they feel such pride to have a courageous mother who overcame great obstacles in order to give them a better life.

Have you ever had a pair of shoes that, when you look at them in the closet, transport you back to a specific time and place? That's certainly the case with me and these boots you see appearing in our new "Walk with Us" campaign.

I wore these boots when I served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Honduras ('93-'95), when I would hike about 5km from a town in the valley up the mountain towards a remote village near the Guatemalan border. When the mud became too thick, I'd jump on the back of a pick-up truck and hold on tight as it wound its way up the mountain with thirty of us in back. Those boots helped me anchor myself in the back.

The house I lived in had a zinc roof, which created tons of little spaces for critters to crawl into. The tiny place was an insect zoo -- ants, scorpions, spiders, flying cockroaches. The cockroaches were about an inch bigger than most I've seen here in the US. The first time one landed on me, I brushed it off and tried to squash it with my shoe, only to see it scamper away. When I saw it was still alive, I grabbed one of my boots and smacked it with the heel.

That did the job.

One morning, while getting dressed, I was alarmed to discover a big black scorpion on the leg of my pants. Don't ask me how, but I managed not to freak out (scorpions in Honduras can be dangerous). I very slowly maneuvered over to where the make-shift closet was and reached for my trusty work boot. When I knew that I had a good clean shot – I took it. I slammed the boot into my leg and killed the scorpion. But I also gave myself a massive bruise that lingered for weeks!

In this close-up, a woman in Peru weaves a scarf made from alpaca wool.

One of our team members took this photo during a recent trip to Huancayo, Peru, where Five Talents is planning to set up a branch office that will serve survival business owners selling vegetables and creating beautiful scarves, like this one, in the surrounding rural communities.

In places like Huancayo, micro-entrepreneurs have few options for financial services. Five Talents seeks to empower women and men by setting up savings and loan groups, providing low-interest loan capital, and organizing business training seminars with local partners.

We've been doing a little experiment over on our Facebook page, and now we want to up the ante.

Every week, we are posting a Facebook poll question that places you, our friend and supporter, into a fictional role.

This week, we're asking you to step into the shoes of South Sudan President Salva Kiir and make a white-knuckled policy decision.

Previously, we invited our Facebook friends to vote on how they would spend the weekend if they lived in rural Peru.

The goal of this new tradition is two-fold: One, we want to help our friends and supporters learn a little more about the countries where we work. And two, we want to generate more buzz about Five Talents within our fans' existing Facebook networks.

You can help us by simply taking a minute and responding to the weekly poll.

We'll give two lucky people who participate between now and the end of August a snazzy Five Talents polo. Participate once and your name is in the hat. It's that easy!

Of course, we hope you'll want to chime in with an answer every week.

We'll do our best to keep things interesting!

We recently posted this years-old photo to our Instagram account, and it has been generating a little buzz on the photo-sharing platform. Why?

First of all, it's a beautiful shot of the rural landscape in Huancavelica, Peru, taken by our friends at UncorneredMarket.com. In the foreground, a Five Talents staff member walks with two of our local partners.

The photo also communicates a key part of our mission -- to reach the poor in under-served, often rural, communities. In major cities, like Lima, a whole host of microfinance institutions make their services available to local survival business owners. But there are far fewer lenders in rural areas like Huancavelica. Those that do exist often levy exorbitant interest rates. Five Talents seeks to work in these riskier, but more desperate, areas.

As we begin our new fiscal year, we hope you will continue to follow our work and pray for us as we try to reach even more of the under-served poor in the developing world.

Our program director, Suzanne Schultz, took this photo on her May trip to Huancayo, a city in the highlands of Peru where Five Talents hopes to set up another branch office in order to serve the poor in the surrounding countryside.

According to a 2007 article in the Washington Post, Peru has more than 3,000 types of potatoes. By the looks of this photo, you can find a good many of them here at this market in Huancayo.