FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
November 13, 2001
Five Talents International
P.O. Box 331
Vienna, VA 22183
www.fivetalents.org
Contact: Craig Cole, Executive Director, (703) 242-6016 or This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Five Talents International Makes First Grant in India
Shakunbai Rana runs a small grocery shop in the teeming slums of Nagpur in India. With a population of almost three million, Nagpur has over 350 slums, where 30 percent of its people live in overwhelming poverty. Situated in an agricultural area specializing in cotton and oranges, it has very few industries. The poor live in unsanitary conditions, with no running water. Children are malnourished. They have little access to health care.
Rana is one of the luckier ones. Her husband does day labor and her two children are in school. The money she makes selling foodstuffs keeps her family clothed, fed and educated. A small microcredit loan and business training will help Rana to grow her business, add employees, and keep her children in school.
Rana is getting help from Five Talents International, an Anglican initiative working in developing countries using microenterprise development to combat poverty and help break the vicious cycle of poverty that chokes this city and hundreds like it in developing nations.
Through using small business training and small loan programs, Five Talents International helps the poor with an opportunity to improve their living conditions, to live with dignity and to practice the values of stewardship, honesty and sincerity in the spirit of Jesus Christ.
“It’s amazing how far our grant of $15,000 will go,” said Craig Cole, executive director of Five Talents International. “We fully expect more than 500 poor families to be helped over the course of the next year as the loans are repaid and paid out again.”
Five Talents International, which already has programs in Uganda and the Philippines, helps the poor with small business training and loan programs. The Nagpur program is a partnership with the Community Development Society, a local indigenous microcredit agency, which has worked with the Church of North India for many years.
“Thanks to Five Talents, the income of our clients will increase giving them back their dignity, enabling them to support their families, keep their children in school and pay for medical treatments,” said the Rev. P. Y. Singh, an Anglican (Now CNI) priest who will be directing the program".
