Pandemic Surprise
Over a year ago, none of us could ever have guessed what the next year would bring. Global pandemic, lockdowns, loneliness, business closures, overcrowded intensive care facilities, 3.5 million funerals and more seem to be part of the daily news. However, Partners Worldwide has stepped up to challenge the pandemic and to champion the poor in this time of adversity.
Last year we contributed to a fund to help provide special assistance during the pandemic. Further, our team around the world found new ways to provide training and support for our entrepreneurs.
We still created 17,587 new jobs, supporting and sustaining a total of 169,329 jobs to the end of the last fiscal year which had four months of pandemic in it.
But rather than focus on statistics, let’s follow one of our trainers, Pastor Ashley Moni in Sri Lanka. Pastor Moni had been traveling throughout his country and had trained micro and small entrepreneurs to thrive in a context of poverty. During his travels, he came to a village in the area of Mankulam and sensed God leading him to stop for a time and see what might be done to help people there.
The community is made up 315 families who were displaced by the civil war and settled there by the government. Given small plots of undeveloped land, they were told to start farming. However, most had no knowledge, experience or abilities as farmers. Pastor Moni met with them and began to learn about their situation and prayed about a solution.
The response was astounding! The pandemic hit his country and the government decreed a full lockdown. Pastor Moni was not able to return home. He had to stay there. A vacant home was made available and he began the Mankulam Agri Project.
This is a programme to train these new farmers in best practices, helping them to become commercial farmers. Then he brought them together as a cooperative to agree on a community strategy for farming different crops to avoid a single focus where they would all be potential victims of natural disasters and their little resources wiped out.
They are now producing a variety of crops that ripen at different times and keep their cash flowing and participate directly in the processing of specialty food products to increase community health and financial strength.
A Canadian group working with Partners Worldwide Canada, Flourish Financial, stepped up and provided a business loan of $7,000 to this group. Now there is more industrial equipment and scientific evaluation of their food products so that they can be sold in larger urban areas. They are currently developing a brand so that their products will be recognised easily by people across their country.
Now there are 50 families of the 315 who work in this enterprise. This is 15% of the local population participating and benefitting from this business initiative. Poor harvests are decreasing, and the other farmers can see the impact of implementing agricultural best practices and are now coming to us asking about how they can also learn and implement them.
As a result, there has also been a church planted in this community that had no organised witness. Social and educational programmes have been developed to help this hidden and forgotten community.
Imagine being locked away in a small community with no internet or the normal conveniences to which we have become accustomed. Instead of complaining or trying to find someone to blame or a conspiracy to focus on, Pastor Moni saw this as a unique opportunity to bring the Kingdom of God to the disenfranchised. Light, prosperity, health and hope are the consequences of such an attitude.
This is one story of the thousands that could be shared and an evidence of how a loving and caring God intervenes during what might be considered “dark days” in our world.
Thank you for your prayers and support of our work around the world. It continues to bring forth fruit and hope where needed most.