Philippines

Our Weekly Window features a photograph taken by Joseph Paulini, an entrepreneur in northern Virginia who recently led a Business As Mission (BAM) trip to the Philippines.

Having worked in the country since 2002, Five Talents is now setting up an advanced business skills training program for established micro-entrepreneurs in partnership with George Mason University's School of Management.

"Even though we were at first focused on helping businesses get started with loans ranging from $50 to $300, we knew that some would grow beyond the mom and pop store, level," wrote Joseph in a recent guest blog post about Five Talents' early microfinance work in the Philippines. "The wonderful news is that some indeed did, and now we are preparing to give them the extra support that they desperately need."

The photo here shows just a few of the elaborate terraces that farmers in the country use to produce grain and vegetables in mountainous terrain.

Editor's note: This is the first in a three-part blog series by Joseph Paulini, a businessman and entrepreneur based in northern Virginia who recently headed up a Business as Mission trip to the Philippines with another longtime Five Talents supporter, Jeff Johnson. Five Talents is seeking to deepen its work with proven micro-entrepreneurs in the Philippines. Joseph notes that his reflections on the trip are shared by Jeff. Click here to read part two.

Five Talents has long wanted to develop an Entrepreneurship Training Program in the Philippines that would go beyond the basic two-day training program that we have used since about 2005.

Having visited the program two previous times, first in 2002 and again in 2005, I was recently enlisted to return to the Philippines and help to move this agenda into the action phase.

I traveled with my dear friend and long-time Five Talents volunteer, Jeff Johnson, a graduate of George Mason University (1973).

Our current training program is an excellent introduction to business practices for the newly emerging entrepreneurs. By ensuring a basic understanding of a business plan outline, accounting/bookkeeping, marketing and cash flow management, we are equipping budding business people with the skills that help businesses succeed.

Even though we were at first focused on helping businesses get started with loans ranging from $50 to $300, we knew that some would grow beyond the "mom and pop store" level. The wonderful news is that some indeed did and now we are preparing to give them the extra support that they desperately need.

Later this month, we will run a series of blog posts about our program in the Philippines, where we partner with the local Center for Community Transformation (CCT). This photo was taken outisde of Manila in February by Joe Paulini, a businessman living in northern Virginia who teaches business training seminars to micro-entrepreneurs as a part of Five Talents' Business as Mission program.

Joe has been a part of this program since 2002, and he has witnessed first-hand how Five Talents and CCT have been able to empower poor entrepreneurs in some of the darkest, poorest places you will ever see.

"As you drive out of Manila and through the towns you pass on the way, your mind and heart are assaulted by the shocking levels of poverty you see," he said. "Some of the poor are lucky enough to live in a permanent structure, while the poorest live in makeshift shacks made of a patchwork of rusted corrugated steel sheets, woven bamboo, scraps of wood and even cardboard."

You will hear more from Joe in our upcoming blog series on the Philippines.

Lent is a time for personal reconciliation with God – and a time for personal reflection about our priorities in life.

A portion of the Gospel reading for Ash Wednesday at the Church of the Holy Comforter, in Vienna, VA, came from Matt 6:19-21. The passage reads: "Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume, and where thieves break in and steal, but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there is your heart also."

We are consumed by our treasures. Rust and moths do not compare to the idolatry that our possessions demand of us. During our personal reflections this Lent, let us take time to put those idols aside, and refocus our priorities.

Where is your heart? Is your heart open to God's presence? If it is, then beware: God may want to transform it.

My life was transformed at the age of 12 on a mission trip to a South Dakota Indian Reservation. The difference in my lifestyle and that of those we visited was stark. At the same time, their spirit of hospitality was generous. I learned then that God calls us to go deeper and to experience relationships in places that we never thought possible. To see people for who they are, where they are.

On November 13, many churches around the country will read an old story that Christ once told on a Galilean hillside: Three servants received large amounts of money from their master. Two invested their stipend, doubling the return. One dug a hole and buried an opportunity to exercise his gifts.

I am talking, of course, about the Parable of the Five Talents in Matthew 25:14-30, from which our organization takes its name.

One of the key verses reads that the master gave talents to his servants "...each according to his ability." This phrase – "each according to his ability" – contains a liberating message for the poor, and also for ourselves. This Gospel reading suggests that we are made in the image of God and, therefore, all of us have value and gifts to use for ourselves, our families and our communities.

Five Talents is built on this belief. The poor have value and can be empowered to tap their own unique gifts and abilities to create a better life. When Five Talents began 11 years ago, words like sustainability, economic empowerment, and self-supporting churches were just beginning to be whispered. Now these words are being shouted from every corner of the world.

I dare say Five Talents has helped to lead that conversation as a means of growing God's Kingdom.

This evening, we were back in Manila. I spent the afternoon on the back streets of this Philippine city interviewing several clients in a business mentoring program that our partner, the Center for Community Transformation has established with St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Manila. It sounds strange but it was exhilarating for me to be out and about in a vibrant but very poor section of Manila. The busyness was frenetic. Everyone selling something, everywhere cars weaving in and out, and the haze of pollution giving the air a consistent gray color that seems impenetrable to sunlight.