This blog post was written by our CEO, Rachel Lindley.
Lake Baringo, Kenya.
You have no doubt been inundated with updates from all kinds of companies, individuals, and charities regarding the developing Coronavirus pandemic. Five Talents does not want to add to the panic and disruption the virus is causing, but we thought many of our readers would like to know how Five Talents is adapting both in the UK, and across our programmes globally, in response to the outbreak.
In line with government advice, our little UK team began working from home last week. None of us have experienced any illness, but we felt this was an important step to safeguard not only our staff, but also the most vulnerable in our own communities.
Unfortunately, social distancing means Five Talents has had to press pause on some of our exciting upcoming events. We know many of you will be stuck at home for an extended period of time and looking for something interesting to remain engaged and inspired with the outside world! Keeping in touch is more important now than ever. We’ll be sharing some new ways to keep up with Five Talents soon - but in the meantime we encourage picking up the phone to check in on neighbours, friends, coworkers, church members and loved ones to ensure we all keep a positive outlook!
Many of you will wonder what is happening on the ground - and have concern for members of our Savings Groups. Our members and programme staff remain our top priority. Thankfully, in the countries we work in only a small number of cases of coronavirus have been reported. We are recommending our staff follow local government advice and travel restrictions. If you would like to monitor how our programme countries are being affected, you can do so by clicking here.
If our trainers cannot travel to remote villages to train and support Savings Groups, and if Savings Groups themselves can no longer gather together, clearly much of Five Talents' valuable work will have to pause. We have committed to continue paying the salaries of our trainers as long as we can, even if they cannot travel to train. We are exploring digital alternatives for training, although the remote places we work means this might not be possible everywhere.
Our programmes have been building communities and resilience for 20 years - they are equipping members to face emergencies just like this one! We are also using this as an opportunity to share learning between programmes via phone calls and some programme staff are embarking on online courses - something they don’t normally have a lot of time for!
We are remaining positive, finding new approaches to training in our programmes and exploring new ways to engage with all of you here in the UK, but we recognise there will be tough times ahead - and as always, toughest for the most vulnerable both here and abroad. For those of faith, we ask you to pray for members of all our programmes, and for everyone affected by Coronavirus, as well as for all those in the health, education, charity and other key sectors seeking to keep essential work going throughout.
Please continue to check our blog or opt-in to our mailing list to keep up to date with ways you can stay involved with Five Talents. You can click here for more information on Covid-19. For ways to cope, we’ve found this website useful.