Economic Empowerment in Ethiopia

Addis Ababa, Ethiopia is a city under constant construction. From my first trip in 2011 to my trip last month the city continues to expand and grow. A new rail system allows for mass transit within the city and stretches to the outlying areas. New luxury hotels and a new headquarters for the African Union dot the skyline. New roads are being built all over and the airport is being expanded and updated. It is filled with the signs of progress, but it also is stricken with poverty and abandoned children.  You can find a $40,000 a night hotel suite, but it is also home to thousands of people living on less than $2 a day.  It has one of the fastest growing economies in Africa, but as more and more people come to the city from the rural areas Urban poverty has been exacerbated and the city contains more people that the economy can support.

World Orphans has 9 church partners in Addis and the surrounding communities. These churches serve approximately 160 families through our home based care (HBC) program. The families are supported by the church receiving a monthly distribution of a staple foods, cooking oil, and hygiene products. This support enables mothers and grandmothers to keep their families together and makes it possible for them survive the bumps in the road society’s most vulnerable are constantly enduring.

All of the mother’s in our program are widows – either by death or abandonment they have been left to care for their children on their own. 75% of the women served were not members of the church when they entered the program.   Not all the families are Christians, some of them believe in nothing, others are Muslim.  Many of them were hopeless and alone- contemplating suicide or even attempting to take their own life sometimes precedes entering the program.  They have no one working for them and sometimes they even have people actively working against them.   Some of the stories just take your breath away. On my most recent trip I sat with a family going through an incredibly heartbreaking situation dealing with the death of a caregiver and an attempted land grab at the same time – it was all I could do to not break into tears as I looked into the faces of those children.   This all changes when they enter the HBC program and this article could easily be about the impact that simply being a part of the HBC program has on these women and their families.

How their lives are transformed by the care of the local church…
How the members of the church care for them and love them…
How the members of the groups care for one another in both the ups and downs of life…
How profoundly the tangible assistance provided to them monthly relieves the immense day to day burden of survival they carry…

But that is not what this story is about because of churches and staff in Ethiopia wasn’t satisfied with just helping them survive. They wanted more than that for these women and their children and an economic empowerment program was born in 2015. Each group received business and personal finance training and formed a savings group where they come together to encourage each other to save as much as they can for emergencies or for the long term needs of their families.  After the savings groups were formed micro loans began in 2016.

We’ve developed a 4 cycle micro loan program. The caregivers will receive approximately $30, $60, $125 and $250 loans.  They use to loan to start or improve a business they use to care for their families.   To be eligible for the next loan they must pay back the previous one completely. The goal is that at the end of this 4 year cycle the families will be self-sufficient and not need our assistance anymore. These small loans have succeeded beyond our wildest dreams. As I type this we are approaching the end of our 2nd cycle of loans. 20 caregivers have now received two loans, 25 women have received one loan and in May we will make a 3rd set of loans – the first 20 caregivers will receive a 3rd loan, the next 25 will receive their 2nd loan and a new group of 40 women will receive their 1st loan. Several women have been so successful with the loans that they have already voluntarily given up their spot in the HBC program because they no longer need any assistance. Our repayment rates are unbelievable – about 97% of the loans have been repaid fully and the only defaults were due to an advance case of leprosy, death or leaving the program completely.

However, Economic Empowerment isn’t just about numbers and ledgers. It’s about people. It’s about relief. It’s about hope. It’s about opportunity. It’s about dignity. It’s about dreaming. I’m so thankful to have been able to sit with these women twice in the last year and hear their stories. When you look in the faces of these women you can see the harsh realities of life for the poorest of the poor in the developing world, but look closer and you can see joy and you see courage, resilience and determination. The world doesn’t care about these people, but someone does. These women are loved by their creator and his heart breaks over the way his creation has been twisted to create systems where people live in opulence and luxury while others struggle just to survive. We are trying to create new systems – systems where those who have more than enough share just a little to help those who don’t have enough. The dedicated members of our World Orphans Ethiopia staff, the church pastors and the home based care coordinators are training, equipping, and caring for these women and it’s working. They’ve created a community together and within this community these women are being empowered with very small micro loans and the results have been phenomenal. Over the next few weeks I’m going to share some of the individual stories of these women and their experiences with these loans. The results are simply amazing.

These women have turned small loans into life change. They’ve gained hope and confidence and changed the environment in their homes. They are leaving behind brutally demanding jobs as day laborers and striking out of their own. They are sending their kids to school, they are providing more nutritious food to eat, they are purchasing life saving medicines, they are overcoming disasters and surviving lost income due to political unrest. They are caring for each other and dreaming about the future. They are learning lessons from failures and capitalizing on their successes. We are just two cycles into the program and I can’t wait to see what the future holds for the families.

Do you want to be part of this? Consider making a donation to help fund economic empowerment at World Orphans. $30 funds a new loan for a caregiver in Ethiopia. $460 will fund the entire 4 year cycle of loans for a caregiver. $1200 will fund new loans for all 40 women entering the program this year.

Click here to fund micro loans!

***Please scroll down to Select Economic Empowerment Campaign and type Ethiopia Economic Empowerment in Notes on next page****

Want to read a success story from last year?  Click here to read Zeritu’s Story

Want to read an overview of World Orphans Economic Empowerment program?  Click here.

Connecting Your Work to God’s Work – Thoughts from Every Good Endeavor by Timothy Keller (Part 1)

Last month I read Every Good Endeavor by Timothy Keller.  This is one of the best books I have ever read.  Here are some chapter by chapter quotes… and here is a link to buy the book or the (kindle version).

Part One:  God’s Plan for Work

Chapter One:  The Design of Work

Freedom is not so much the absence of restrictions as finding the right ones, those that fit with the realities of our own nature and those of the world. So the commandments of the Bible are a means of liberation, because through them God calls us to be what he built us to be.

We were built for work and freed by work.  But remember when we feel that our lives are completely absorbed by work, we must also honor work’s limits.  There is no better starting point for a meaningful work like than a firm grasp of this balanced work and rest theology.

Chapter 2:  The Dignity of Work

Work has dignity because it is something that God does and because we do it in God’s place, as his representatives.  We learn not only that work has dignity in itself, but also that all kinds of work have dignity.

All work has dignity because it reflects God’s image in us, and also because the material creation we are called to care for is good.

We were built for work and the dignity it gives us as human beings, regardless of its status or pay… And every Christian should be able to identify, with conviction and satisfaction, the ways in which his or her work participate with God in his creativity and cultivation.

Chapter 3:  Work as Cultivation

And that is the pattern for all work.  It is creative and assertive.  It is rearranging the raw material of God’s creation in such a way that it helps the world in general, and people in particular, thrive and flourish.

Whenever we bring order out of chaos, whenever we draw out creative potential, whenever we elaborate and “unfold” creation beyond where we found it, we are following God’s pattern of creative cultural development.

A biblical understanding of work energizes our desire to create value from resources available to us.  Recognizing the God who supplies our resources, and who gives us the privilege of joining in as co-cultivators, helps us enter into our work with a relentless spirit of creativity.

Chapter 4:  Work as Service

We are not to choose jobs and conduct our work to fulfill ourselves and accrue power, for being called by God to do something is empowering enough.  We are to see work as a way of serve to God and our neighbor and so we should both choose and conduct our work in accordance with that purpose… The question must be “how, with my existing abilities and opportunities, can I be of greatest service to other people, knowing what I do of God’s will and of human need.”

If the point of work is to serve and exalt ourselves, then our work inevitably becomes less about the work becomes less about the work and more about us.  Our aggressiveness will eventually become abuse, our drive will become burnout, and our self-sufficiency will become self-loathing.  But if the purpose of work is to serve and exalt something beyond ourselves, then we actually have a better reason to deploy our talent, ambition, and entrepreneurial vigor- and we are more likely to be successful in the long run, even by the world’s definition.

The church’s approach to an intelligent carpenter is usually confined to exhorting him to not be drunk and disorderly in his leisure hours and to come to church on Sundays.  What the church should be telling him is this:  that the very first demand that his religion makes upon him is that he should make good tables!