This blog post was written by Rachel Lindley, our CEO.
Embers burn in a member’s cafe kitchen, Kenya.
I recently moved into a little cottage in rural north Lincolnshire, complete with a wood-burning stove; it’s fair to say I’ve been on a steep learning curve on how to light it! I vaguely remembered school science classes teaching me about the three essentials for fire - fuel, oxygen and heat, and of course thinking in threes comes easily to us at Five Talents.
We often think in threes: our three offices (UK, US & Kenya); our strategic pillars (Growth, Tell the World & Addressing Injustice); and we even have three ways we ask you to help us (Give, Pray, Tell)! So, the fire triangle of fuel, oxygen and heat was easy for me to grasp - but the revelation, missed from my science classes 30 years ago, was the role of kindling!
I tried several times to get the fire going without kindling, and always failed. But just a couple of sticks of kindling, and whoosh, the coffee logs and wood logs are literally on fire.
Which got me thinking… What is the kindling for Five Talents? There are so many possibilities:
An amazing team of staff in the UK office; I am so grateful to work with a team which has stayed focused, dedicated, hard working and passionate, even after so many months alone at our kitchen tables. This includes colleagues who’ve come & gone before us too. Five Talents would not be where it is today without them.
A clear vision; right now, our teams are building an ambitious new Strategic Plan for scaling up our Savings Groups programmes. Look out for it later this year.
Our evidence-based approach; our Savings Groups have profound economic and social impact, and we have the data to prove it. This year we’re commissioning a longitudinal evaluation of our Burundi programme, revisiting Savings Groups who graduated from our support 10 years ago to trace the impacts today. This is really exciting!
Good governance - perhaps not the most exciting piece of kindling in the bundle, but it is essential. This year we are delivering a comprehensive programme of safeguarding training, and are excited that we have six new trustees on our UK Board (an outcome of our diversity audit in 2020);
Introductions via your networks - this is really the very definition of kindling! Our income, and therefore the number of programmes we can support, has more than doubled since 2015 - and almost every new supporter who has backed our work has been introduced to us by an existing supporter. Thank you!
I’m proud and grateful of all we (you, our partners and thousands of Savings Group members) achieved last year, against the odds. But now we need to do even more. There is huge demand for Savings Groups across the world - and with your help, we can meet it.
So we ask you, this year, to be our kindling! Who could you invite to one of our events - or could you invite us to one of your events? Who can you tell about Five Talents, at work, at church, in your social networks? Who do you know who might help our fire burn even more strongly in 2022?
Let us know at rachel@fivetalents.org.uk - and again, thank you all for being part of this incredible journey. As Anne, our partner in Karamoja, Uganda, told us in December: ‘It is spreading from one small area, it is spreading like fire!’