Five Talents Virtual Town Hall Brings Together 10 Time Zones to Hear from Kenyan Partners 

Folks spanning 10 different time zones around the world raised their morning coffee mugs or afternoon tea cups on May 14 to “attend” local, microfinance non-profit, Five Talents’ first-ever digital event: a virtual town hall. The Zoom webinar gave over 40 attendees the opportunity to learn more about the Christian organization’s mission and hear a live conversation with their partners from Five Talents Kenya: Executive Director, Peterson Karanja and Microfinance Expert, Peter Mugendi, about what life has been like for them during this pandemic. 

Karanja spoke to the adjustments of now working from home saying it has ‘instilled discipline in all of us.’ He added that his family has created a three-part survival strategy that is helping them ‘use our time profitably through the daily schedules.’ After joking that being named some variation of ‘Peter’ is not a prerequisite to work at Five Talents Kenya, Mugendi explained how Coronavirus is greatly impacting their programs. Savings groups are the backbone of the Five Talents model: neighbors meeting together, saving together and learning basic business skills which, empower them to start their own businesses using loans they get from their fellow group members. Mugendi explained that because of social distancing rules, savings groups are not allowed to meet. “…the rate of loan repayment has gotten so low because they are no longer doing their normal business meetings.” He added later “the moment that their capacity to mobilize has been completely compromised, it means it’s really difficult for them to [bounce back] again.“ 

During the live Q and A portion of the town hall, several attendees were curious what additional challenges Karanja and Mugendi foresee for the Five Talents Kenya team once the Covid-19 dust settles. They pointed out that this virus is just one of the deadly crises the Kenyan people are facing right now. Flooding, landslides and locust infestations are all having devastating effects especially on the most vulnerable living in rural areas – right where Five Talents members are. Mugendi said the strong partnership Five Talents has with the local church is currently and will continue to play a key role in building up the resiliency of these savings groups. “All our groups are church-affiliated and in times of crisis, the communities look at the church. And so we continue leveraging on both the church infrastructure but also the integrity and credibility of the church and the church leadership to get our groups back on track.” 

When asked how the attendees could pray for Five Talents Kenya, Peterson shared, “… that God may give us people to partner with and the resources that we require to do this mission-related work.”