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| Sammy and his wife in their shop |
Jeff Bloem (Research Assistant intern with me in Kitale) wrote this story on one of our business clients in Kitale. The story is well-written and I'm sure you will enjoy it.
Samuel Ondieki’s day starts early and ends late. At 6:00am,
while it is still dark he opens his business, Ambassador General Shop, which
provides household essentials and cooking products. The shop stays open until
10:00pm, serving customers in Kitale; a bustling agricultural town in Western
Kenya well after the sun has set.
Sammy considers his business successful: the sales are
profitable and he is usually able to sell whatever he stocks. Most importantly,
he is able to provide for his wife and three children from the profits of the
store.
The business is not perfect however. Admittedly, Sammy
struggles with bookkeeping, specifically recording daily sales figures and
purchasing records. It is this lack of recordkeeping that primarily hinders
Sammy’s ability to strategically plan and invest for the future of his store.
The boundaries between Sammy’s business and Sammy’s personal
life are blurred and also create a hurdle for the growth of his business. It is
difficult to decipher the difference between Sammy’s home life and business
life. Physically, he and his family live in a house adjoined to the back of the
shop. Even when at home, Sammy is never far from his business. Economically,
Sammy struggles to differentiate between which goods, profits, and materials
are for the use of the business and which are for the use of his family.
In the eleven years Sammy has owned and operated Ambassador
General Shop he has taken five loans, each for about $3,000. All were used to
expand and grow the assets of his business, which is now staffed by three
employees.
The history and reality of Sammy’s business point to the
importance of viable access to capital and business training when it comes to
business development as a means for poverty reduction.
The evidence is generally pessimistic when it comes to job
or business training as a means of developing countries and communities,
however. In terms of education and training the return is simply much higher
when focusing on primary and secondary school aged children than training
full-grown adults. Nonetheless the training of business men and women is almost
ubiquitous in the operations of microfinance and other loan institutions throughout
many developing countries.
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| Ambassador General Shop |
More and more experts are thinking the main constraint to
growth is plain old capital. Many now believe that once most people have proper
access to capital other necessities such as health, education, infrastructure,
and government institutions become not so necessary. This idea is reinforced by
recent reports in The
Economist, The
New York Times Magazine, NPR,
and the radio shows Planet
Money and This
American Life that one-time cash grants are providing surprisingly
positive results in the lives and businesses of the poor the world over. Surely
Sammy would not be where he is today without access and support of capital
infusions into his business.
But what then, is the significance of his struggles to keep
complete records of his business and properly separate his family’s needs and
his business’s stock? How does business training help Sammy, if at all?
Those who Run
Together…
Columbia University professor and blogger on aid and
development, Chris Blattman explains the relationship between acquired skills
and capital this way: “I used to think skills and capital were like right and
left shoes: one’s not so useful without the other. Now I think of capital like
the shoes and skills like the laces: if I have capital, I can jog a good pace,
but I can’t really run unless I have the skills.”
Sammy has been jogging with his business for the last eleven
years. He provides for his family and is even able to slowly expand his
business, but he doesn’t do it as fast or as well as he could. He needs
business training to be able to really run.
Last spring Sammy received the training he needed. This,
however, wasn’t the typical training seen by most business owners in developing
countries. The training took place within his church. He didn’t just learn how
to keep better records and separate his business initiatives from his family life;
he learned that his work with his business was deeply spiritual and could be a
way to worship and to serve God.
Furthermore, after the twelve-week training ended, his
pastor was there to continually equip and encourage Sammy. Discipleship is the
key to expanding and growing Sammy’s business so that he can better care for
the poor and vulnerable, support the church, and influence the businesses and businesspeople
around him.
The problem with having good shoes with good laces is that
sometimes Sammy doesn’t feel like running. Surely anyone who has began a new
year by purchasing new shoes or a gym membership understands that exercising
more requires something additional outside of just having access to the
equipment. To wake up everyday and operate a business efficiently and
successfully takes inner-drive, self-sacrifice, and passion. The pain and agony
that inevitably comes with hard work must be overcome by a sense of purpose, a
calling, and encouragement from others.
In his book, The
Social Animal, David Brooks writes about the importance of meaningful human
interaction in the lives of humans. Without meaningful interaction between each
other our accomplishments, no matter how extraordinary, will fail to bring
fulfillment and purpose to our lives. Researchers call networks of meaningful
interaction social capital. The lesson here is social capital is important and
must not be overlooked when evaluating projects of development and business
growth.
A runner doesn’t achieve his highest goals without constant
coaching and teammates to run with. Likewise, Sammy’s business will not achieve
it’s goals of serving God, caring for the poor, preserving the environment, and
making a steady and healthy profit without consistent discipleship from his
pastor and his fellow church members.
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| Sammy certificated and commissioned as a Marketplace Minister. |
Discipleship for business growth and the Gospel message is
now deeply routed in Sammy who has joined a “Training of Trainers” class and is
becoming certified to teach other businesspeople the principles he has learned.
He forms a key part of the Marketplace Ministry team at his church, the Friends
Quaker Church in Kitale. In addition, Sammy is mentoring a business owner of a
smaller business from his church while simultaneously being mentored by a businessperson
of a larger business from his church.
… Will Be Transformed
Nicholas Wolterstorff observes the heartbeat of the Christian
existence, which has been in place since the creation of the world. We gather
on Sunday to engage in liturgy as a community of believers and then disperse
from Monday through Saturday to go about our duties and responsibilities which we
call work. This constant one-plus-six heartbeat has defined the Christian way
of being in the world from age to age.
Wolterstorff goes on to define the meaning of this constant
expanding and contracting as follows: “The church is to gather for the celebration
of the liturgy, and when it is dispersed it is to practice and struggle for
justice and to spread the word about its Lord”. The most central point
Wolterstorff is making is that liturgy in the church is not authentic unless
those same members of the church go and “act justly, love mercy, and walk
humbly with God” (Micah 6:8).
Put in terms of the analogy already in use; liturgy and
justice are not right and left shoes, rather liturgy is like the shoes and
justice is like the laces. To engage only in liturgy, one could jog slowly and
go to church every week. But to really run in the way God intended; those shoes
need the laces of justice to become truly effective.
Sammy now has both shoes strapped on tight and he is ready
to run. On his left foot he wears a shoe, this is the capital he is able to
access in order to invest and grow his business. His left shoe is laced up
tight with the laces of business training, which taught him to keep better
records and construct secure boundaries between his business and his family. On
his right foot he wears another shoe, this is liturgy—the actions of worship,
confession, thanksgiving, praise, scripture reading, and preaching he receives
every Sunday. This shoe is laced tight with his acts of justice from Monday through
Saturday—caring for the widow, the orphan, the alien, and the poor while
operating his business efficiently.
Put together Sammy is now able to run in the way God
intended. Furthermore, he has a community of brothers and sisters running with
him—there were forty other business people just like Sammy who also attended
the business training class. They are able to support and ride the ups and
downs of business and life together. They are able to discuss and debate the
inevitable ethical dilemmas each will experience in the marketplace.
This transformation is what Bryant Myers writes about in his
book, Walking with the Poor. The poor
have a marred identity. Their understanding of who they are, their relationship
with those around them, with the ground below them, and with God above them
must be restored. (For matters of discussion, Myers also writes about the
marred identity of the non-poor.) A rigorous and statistical evaluation of this
program is currently in progress and will not have results until late next
year, it seems however, at least anecdotally, that real transformation is
happening in Western Kenya.
With capital and training, liturgy and justice, Sammy and
his fellow church members are able to grow their businesses and escape poverty
all the while confident that they are fulfilling God’s call through their work
and actions not just on Sunday but also Monday through Saturday.
Sources:
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Chris Blattman’s blog; www.chrisblattman.com; Dear Governments: Want to Help the Poor and Transform your Economy?
Give People Cash; May, 2013
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David Brooks; The Social Animal; Random
House, New York; 2011
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Bryant Myers; Walking with the
Poor;
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Nicholas Wolterstorff; Hearing
the Call: Liturgy, Justice, Church World; Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, MI; 2011
[Jeff is the seventh intern that I have had and the first to quote sources in his story!! I think research is a good role for him!]
Sammy joins me on Monday for the second session of the Training of Trainers, along with 29 other pastors and business persons who will be certificated as trainers by November 12. It will be an intense class with a good size group that will give some challenges to make sure that everyone is comfortable with the material and able to teach it. Please pray for us!
On Wednesday morning, I left for a short silent retreat at Mt. Elgon National Park. If you have read this blog for some time, you know that I try to take a silent retreat annually. A silent retreat, as the name implies, is no talking, no reading (not even the Bible, except for one text), usually not even praying (although communication with God helps to center, as the prayers below indicate)...just quieting myself (usually through lots of journaling) and listening for the voice of God. I often spend much time praying and not much time listening, so this is an intensive attempt to listen. I had not had a chance yet this year to do this, but I was able to grab a couple of days last week. I usually take about five days, as I need two days to empty myself before really being able to hear God's voice; I am then able to spend a couple of delightful, heavenly days in His presence, and then one day to adjust to being back on earth. This time, however, I would have Wednesday to drive and settle in, Thursday as a full day of quiet, and then have to leave by Friday morning; so basically one full day. Naturally, I was a bit nervous about whether or not I would be able to quiet myself quickly enough to hear Him. And, often, as I try to hear or strain to be quiet, I can sometimes get noisier. I found this prayer by Ted Loder to be helpful (from Guerrillas of Grace):
confront me as a prophet:
