Five Talents is a Christian Microfinance charity. It provides loans to groups of entrepreneurs, and also offers business training and mentoring to clients. It has attracted notice and acclaim throughout the Anglican Communion and in secular news sources.[1]
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Five Talents has offices in London, Washington and Uganda, and partners with organisations in eleven countries around the world.
Five Talents was founded at the Lambeth Conference of Anglican Church leaders in 1998[2] as 'a long term response to help the poor in developing countries based on need not creed'.[3]
The patron is the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams.[4]
The Chairman of the Board of Trustees is Graham Carr FCA[5] and the Chair of the Council of Reference is Lord Griffiths of Fforestfach.[6]
Five Talents currently works in eleven developing countries, which are: Burundi, Bolivia, Dominican Republic, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Peru, Philippines, Sudan, Tanzania, and Uganda [7]
In May 2010 Five Talents featured on the BBC's monthly television charity appeal programme 'Lifeline'.[8] A short film starring starring Sandi Toksvig was broadcast on BBC1 and explored the impact of Five Talents on the poor in Tanzania.
Five Talents UK won the 2011 Award from Advocates for International Development (A4ID) for the best Development Partner. [9] This award celebrates the outstanding achievements of legal professionals and the development organisations they have worked with in tackling extreme poverty and meeting the UN’s Millennium Development Goals.
Five Talents UK was also the overall winner of the City of London Sustainable City Award, 2009.[10] It was also shortlisted for the Financial Times Sustainable Banking Awards 2010, in the category “Banking at the base of the pyramid”.[11]
'Business As Mission' is the concept that business professionals can use their God-given skills and talents to assist poor entrepreneurs in developing countries who are starting small businesses as a way out of poverty.[12] Five Talents pursues new and creative ways for business people to use their skills and talents in the overseas mission field by providing business training and one-on-one business counseling for loan recipients. The ultimate goal is a transformative experience for all involved.
Five Talents’ Business as Mission Program coordinates short-term mission trips and the development of biblically-based leadership and business training curricula for church leaders and entrepreneurs. The curriculum covers the basics of entrepreneurship, business planning, marketing, and recordkeeping, along with spiritual support, thus equipping loan recipients to run and expand their businesses.
Unlike most training programs, the Five Talents methodology is less conceptual and more concrete in actions. It incorporates interactive exercises that are less dependent on high levels of written literacy and case studies. Five Talents is taking the lead in alleviating poverty not through handouts but through teaching sensible and biblical business practices and building capacity to manage Christian MicroEnterprise Development (CMED)[13] programs.
Five Talents operates using a group lending model. Loans are given to the group as a whole and so if one person has difficulty in repaying, the others in the group will have to cover their repayments. This system is similar to that originally developed by the Grameen Bank and Muhammad Yunus, and aims to reach those who are unable to take out commercial loans due to lack of collateral. Typically groups will consist of between 5 and 10 people.[14] The majority of borrowers are women.
Five Talents is a member and regular contributor of the UK All Party Parliamentary Group on Microfinance [15] The purpose of the APPG is to raise awareness of microfinance and the role it can play in reducing poverty, particularly in the developing world. As such, the APPG also provides a Parliamentary forum for discussion on new developments and current debates in the field of microfinance.
Tom Sanderson, Five Talents’ UK director – is a member of the Steering Group of the UK Microfinance Club. This club provides a forum for UK enthusiasts of microfinance. With over 360 members from NGOs, corporates, government, media, universities and the public, their aims are to exchange best practices, raise awareness and share information to help improve the delivery of microfinance to the world's poor. [16]
Tom Sanderson, Five Talents' UK director, regularly writes articles and gives talks on microfinance. He recently contributed to a debate about microfinance covered in the Financial Times [17]
In February 2011 Tom addressed St Paul’s Institute in London on the topic of christian microfinance [18]