Monday, November 30, 2009

Inspiration from the Philippines


Todd: At PEER Servants, one of our most distinctive core values is what we call "The Reign of Reciprocity". It puts into practice the belief that God has created us to be a blessing to each other. That is true whether one is materially rich or materially poor. Time and time again we have experienced ways God has prepared our brothers and sisters in Christ from around the world to enrich and strengthen us. That is true for Les and me, and it is true for a growing number of those associated with PEER Servants.

That was particularly true in my November 2009 trip to the Philippines and our microfinance partner, The Center for Community Transformation (CCT). CCT has over 100,000 community partners, including these four weavers (upper right), whom they serve with loans, savings programs, insurance, weekly fellowship groups (including Bible studies), and so much more. They run the microfinance activity so well that the profits generated can provide funding for ministry to streetdwellers (lower left) and children of the microfinance clients. They excel at meeting both the physical and spiritual needs of the very materially poor in the Philippines and doing so in a manner that the materially poor come to discover all that God made them to be. It is really inspiring to be around the CCT team!

Joining me on this trip were David Ryder, our PEER Servants Board Chairman (upper left), and Heather and Jeff Takle (sitting second and third from the right in the lower right picture). It was the first trip to one of our microfinance partners for Dave and he returned very impressed with the work of CCT and committed to Christian microfinance as a means to empower the materially poor. Heather and Jeff worked closely with the CCT staff in gaining exposure and completing research enabling them to prepare some case studies on CCT. These case studies will be used by other indigenous Christian MFIs around the world as they map out their own paths to becoming high-impact organizations.

We thank God for CCT and the other microfinance organizations around the world whom God is using to not only strengthen the materially poor, but those of us in PEER Servants as well.