Dear friends,
You may be inundated with updates on the Coronavirus pandemic. But we felt you, as our wonderful supporters, would want to know how we are adapting our work, both in the US and globally.
Adapting to Best Serve Our Partners
Our little US team began working from home a week ago, in line with government advice. Although none of us have experienced any illness, we felt this was an important step to safeguard not only our staff, but also the most vulnerable in our own communities.
We postponed all Five Talents events and trips, until at least May, but we are working on alternative ideas to keep you all engaged and inspired! We believe keeping in touch with one another is more important than ever now, and we'll be sharing some ideas with you soon.
Our work on the ground and our concern for members of Savings Groups remain our priority. Thankfully, in our program countries so far, only a small number of cases of coronavirus have been reported (we find this website useful for tracking cases globally). However, we are concerned that the numbers will rise, and weaker healthcare systems in many of the places where we work will be overstretched. We are in regular touch with international program staff, as ever, and we have asked them to take care and follow local government advice and travel restrictions.
If our trainers cannot travel to remote villages to train and support Savings Groups, and if Savings Groups themselves can no longer gather together, clearly much of Five Talents' valuable work will have to pause. We have committed to continue paying the salaries of our trainers as long as we can, even if they cannot travel to train. Our trainers will continue to be in touch with the new Savings Group leaders in remote village by cell-phone, providing encouragement and mentoring from afar.
More positively, we know our programs have been building communities and resilience for 20 years now, and these essential foundations will help our members face emergencies just like this one. We are also using this as an opportunity to share learning between programs via phone calls, and some program staff are embarking on online courses - something they don’t normally have a lot of time for.
A Strong Foundation
We are determined to be positive throughout this pandemic; we will use it as an opportunity to explore new approaches to training and new ways to engage with you, our supporters. And we hope to strengthen our community here in the US, taking a leaf from the wonderfully strong communities we see in our programs around the world.
We also recognize there will be tough times ahead, and as always, toughest for the most vulnerable both here and abroad. For those of faith, we ask you to pray for members of all our programs, and for everyone affected by Coronavirus, as well as for all those in the health, charity and other key sectors seeking to keep essential work going throughout.
Thank you again for your continued support. We are so grateful to have supporters like you, and we wish you and yours health and resilience.
Until next Monday morning,
Dale Stanton-Hoyle,
Executive Director