Perhaps you already have 5 books on your must-read list for 2013. Or maybe you have more like 50. Either way, we hope you'll read at least a couple of the following picks over the next 12 months. We're recommending titles that approach poverty from a variety of perspectives. Whether you are a development specialist or someone who simply loves a good story, we have you covered.
The Dragon's Gift If you're interested in Africa and would like to learn more about the aid and investments that are flowing into the continent, then Deborah Brautigam's The Dragon's Gift is a must-read. The author has spent decades studying China's investment and aid packages to African governments. Besides offering a timely and ground-breaking analysis of China's activity on the continent, Brautigam also provides context so that we can understand how China's approach to aid and investment differs from that of the United States and other Western nations. For a great review of the book, click here.
Where China Meets India If you'd like to learn more about one of the countries where Five Talents works, we recommend this book about Myanmar (Burma). Last year, the Burmese government made news by launching a series of reforms, including a loosening of media controls and an embrace of democratic elections. What was once one of the most closed societies in the world was suddenly opening its doors to the West and inviting investment to help spur development. Where China Meets India, by Thant Myint-U, is an engrossing travelogue that shows just how fast Myanmar is changing.
A Free Man If you want to read a profile of an individual who is struggling to escape a world of poverty, look no further than Aman Sethi's A Free Man. The author, a correspondent for The Hindu, focuses his non-fiction narrative on the life of a homeless day-laborer in Delhi, India. The fast-paced story takes the reader into a world that few of us in the West have ever seen. Esther Duflo, co-author of Poor Economics (another great book that we have written about), calls Sethi's book "a beautiful work of journalism," adding: "What starts as classic ethnography becomes a gripping story, and ends as a homage to a lost friend."
Through the Eye of a Needle If you enjoy history and would like to learn more about the early church and Christians' view of wealth and poverty, read Peter Brown's acclaimed Through the Eye of a Needle: Wealth, the Fall of Rome, and the Making of Christianity in the West, 350-550 AD. Brown, a respected historian, excels at evoking the life of the ancients through colorful prose and through profound readings of saints like Ambrose, Augustine and Jerome. As Christianity Today puts it, Brown lets us "hear the heartbeat of late Roman and early Christian civilization."
When Helping Hurts If you'd like to learn about how the Christian church has helped – and hurt – the cause of the impoverished around the world, then pick up Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert's When Helping Hurts: How to Alleviate Poverty Without Hurting the Poor...and Yourself. The book was re-released in 2012 with a new foreword and two new chapters. Readers interested in learning more about the philosophy that informs Five Talents' approach to micro-enterprise development will find this book particularly helpful.
Group lending methodology: FTU clients form groups and thus draw up a constitution together and democratically elect their leaders. They commit themselves as individual clients within the group and save together. They apply for loan support from FTU as a group and thus the loan is guaranteed by the group. Once approved by FTU, FTU shares expected repayment schedule with the group. After servicing several loans to the group, members are able to graduate to the individual category.
Individual lending methodology: Some individuals graduate from the group methodology to individual lending methodology. Individuals begin to save and then approach FTU for loans. When applications are accepted, they bring guarantors for the loan offered. Once approved by FTU, FTU gives the repayment schedule to the client.
FTU offers the following loan options: working capital loans, salary loans, asset acquisition loans, and home improvement loans.
Training and Resource Examples:
Business skills development: leadership, financial planning, management, cash flow, record keeping, pricing
Loan insurance
Christian values
The Program
Five Talents Uganda (FTU) officially opened its doors to the community in June 2006. An exciting expansion, FTU seeks to assist thousands of poor entrepreneurs using a combination of microloans, business training and spiritual development.
Five Talents has been working in Uganda since 2001 in partnership with the Anglican Church of Uganda. FTU is a merger of three of FTI’s previously independent microfinance programs, which were started in the three Dioceses of Namirembe, Kigezi and South Rwenzori. Three branch locations have been established in Kabale, Kasese and Kampala. The Church of Uganda, in collaboration with Five Talents, decided to consolidate these three programs under one legal organization, creating an efficient delivery system for financial services to the poor. The office serves as the primary point of contact for all work undertaken by Five Talents in Uganda, including short-term trips for business professionals to conduct seminars for the clients.
During 2012, Five Talents Uganda expanded into the south (into the district of Kisoro, on the border with DRC and Rwanda), and into Kitgum in the north.
Communities in Northern Uganda have suffered the effects of a long-running conflict between the Lord's Resistance Army and the Government of Uganda, which lasted over twenty years. Five Talents conducted a feasibility study in 2007 in Kitgum, when many communities were still displaced, but at the time funding was not available for this expansion.
In June 2011, a team from Five Talents Uganda and FTUK returned to the Diocese of Kitgum (which covers the northern districts of Kitgum, Pader, Lamwo and Agago) to assess the needs and feasibility of establishing a new Five Talents office in the north. The team found that after years of displacement the majority of the population have returned home. Plans were then put in place to expand into northern Uganda during 2012.
Five Talents Uganda began working in Kitgum in February 2012, with an initial focus on training in business and financial management skills. In the early recovery stages of post-conflict reconstruction, the key issues that need to be addressed are the rebuilding of skills and revitalizing of the local and regional economy. Five Talents Uganda is therefore picking up from where aid agencies have left (many established successful savings groups), by providing additional training and responding to the need for loan capital among the groups, which will enable them to build on, or start, small businesses.
The Need
By the end of 2012, Five Talents Uganda seeks to reach a total of 5,180 clients, including the expansion into Kitgum.
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.
Every so often, we highlight interesting articles and books that touch upon microfinance, poverty or international development. Today's list includes some back-and-forth involving one of America's top newspaper columnists and a new book about one man's experiences in the microfinance industry:
Over at The Atlantic, Max Fisher has collected a rare public back-and-forth between The New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof and Ugandan writer-entrepreneur Teddy Ruge about the media's coverage of Africa. It all began when Ruge responded to a Kristof tweet promoting a column on the "Rise of Africa". Ruge wrote: "... @NickKristof wakes to the idea that Africa is Rising. Hey Nick, I've been writing that line for 5 years now." Kristof then fired back: "Then I beat you to it: I wrote my first 'Africa is rising' piece in 1997." Click here to read the rest of their exchange, in which Ruge states that if Kristof "did nothing but write about Africa is Rising from now on, it'd take u decades to reverse damage u've done to our image." Ouch.
The Five Talents UK office recently put together a new video about our Uganda program's 2012 expansion into Kitgum, a town in the northern part of the country. Here it is -- with a huge thank-you to Thomas White for his work on the filming of the project.
In late May, Five Talents Executive Director Sonia Patterson spent time with micro-entrepreneneurs in our Uganda program.
Here's an Instagram photo of Alice, in Kampala. She told Sonia that her sewing business has helped to transform her life -- and pay for her children's school supplies.
"I am who I am because of Five Talents," she said.
Sonia heard stores like Alice's again and again, and in the coming weeks we will be sharing more of those here on this blog.
Click here to read more about the Five Talents Uganda program.
In lieu of our regular "Weekly Window" post, which features a photo of the week, we are posting one piece of a new photo puzzle, featuring a shot from Uganda by the photographer Thomas White. The remaining seven puzzle pieces are on our Pinterest and Instagram accounts.
Collect all eight and re-pin (or post) them to your own Pinterest or Instagram account by the end of the week and we will send you an exclusive set of postcards featuring Five Talents photography.
The Dragon's Gift
Where China Meets India
A Free Man
Through the Eye of a Needle
When Helping Hurts
