generosity Archives | Page 7 of 8

by Alisa Hoober, Recruitment and Retention Manager

I used to think I was generous. Now I know I have a lot to learn.

I recently had an opportunity to visit HOPE’s savings program in Malawi. We traveled a windy dirt road for several hours to visit a savings celebration in a small village. After meeting for a year and a half, today was the day they were to celebrate the end of their latest savings cycle and receive back the money they had saved. Today was a day to celebrate their hard work. And they were ready to celebrate! We were greeted with singing, dancing, and hugs.

I learned a few things about generosity that day.

There is a difference between giving our leftovers and giving our first fruits.
Shortly after we arrived, we were told that the group had prepared a lunch for us. This was unexpected, but we accepted this as an incredible act of hospitality. We were so grateful. We sat down to a feast of rice, beans, nsima, and chicken. We later learned that this village ate chicken every six months. And they chose to share with us—visitors that they didn’t know. We enjoyed the meal and felt so blessed, knowing that this was an incredible gift we had been given.

This group gave from their first fruits, sharing their best with guests they hardly knew.

by Tyson Presnell, HOPE Field Communications Fellow

A journal entry after visiting a savings group in Lilongwe, Malawi

As I stand up to clear off the table, I carry a strange assortment of foods to the pantry: a pumpkin, peanuts (known here as groundnuts), beans, and eggs. You’d think I had just come from the grocery store or stopped at a roadside stand. No, this food was special. It was from my clients.

I traveled to this savings group on the outskirts of Lilongwe, Malawi’s capital. The group was singing as we arrived. Their group name was fitting: Chimwemwe, which is Chichewa for happiness. After we were introduced to the group, they continued their worship. Following a short message on the importance of prayer, it was time for the savings portion of the meeting. The group chose to worship while turning in their savings because they saw it as a time to celebrate. Continue Reading…

Keeping Christ central

A series from HOPE’s director of spiritual integration

This fall, I had the pleasure of gathering with colleagues and friends from the Christian relief and development community at three different conferences.

I love learning and meeting new people at these events, but this year one observation really blew me away: We typically think of generosity in financial terms, but so many of these leaders are radically generous in sharing their life’s work. It was like they had a bullhorn and were shouting, “Here’s my life’s work—take it and use it however you can!”

For most of the world, innovation is viewed as intellectual property to be fiercely guarded rather than shared. While there is nothing wrong with profiting from hard-earned expertise and diligence, treating one’s knowledge and experience more like Wikipedia than a classified government secret proclaims a different Way … a way of unity, joy, and freedom.

The number of people I know who fit this description goes far beyond Christian organizations and outstrips my space to acknowledge them. So this got me thinking: How can we move away from a posture of protectiveness and choose to open up our lives and work in radically generous ways?

I offer five principles to help us.

You can never be poor, as long as you give.

Congolese proverb

This #GivingTuesday, across the U.S. and around the world, people are celebrating generosity. Often, when we think of giving, we might think of financial giving, which is much needed as we seek to equip families to break the cycle of poverty. But if we look to the Greatest Commandment—to love God and love our neighbor as ourselves—generosity takes on a deeper, much more relational meaning.

At HOPE, it is our greatest joy to walk alongside hard-working families as they put what they have in their hands—their skills, talents, and passions—to work, providing for their families and giving generously to their churches and communities.

Recently, after a community bank meeting in Brazzaville, Republic of Congo, we asked a few HOPE clients to share what generosity means to them. Their words capture the loving heart of generosity we pray that each HOPE-network client lives out in their families and communities. Continue Reading…

Join HOPE in celebrating the clients featured in this year’s gift catalog, men and women using the gifts God has placed in their hands—talents, dreams, and hard work—to provide for their families and give back to their communities.

Living in the rural village of Crasnoarmeiscoe, Moldova, Vera Matveiciuc lost her husband several years ago, leaving her to support their three young daughters on her own. To supplement her $100 monthly salary from her job at a local bank, Vera raised produce and livestock to help feed her family and sell the surplus at market.

In Moldova, one of the poorest countries in Europe, poverty is concentrated in rural areas like Vera’s, where many families live without heat, running water, or nutritious food. Three years ago, Vera didn’t think her family would survive another harsh Moldovan winter without the money needed to insulate and heat their home.

That December, Vera learned about Invest-Credit, HOPE’s local partner, and took out a loan to install insulation and a furnace. “The first loan from Invest-Credit saved my family,” she says. “We could not go through another winter without making changes to our home.”

Last year, nearly 4,000 individuals, families, churches, foundations, and businesses gave over $10 million dollars to support HOPE’s work in 16 countries around the world. At HOPE, we deeply value the partnership and trust of each donor, and we are committed to wise stewardship of the resources God has entrusted to us (1 Peter 4:10). As evidence of this commitment, HOPE received Charity Navigator’s highest rating for the sixth consecutive year, placing us among the top 3 percent of nonprofits nationwide.

As one of HOPE’s grant writers, I prepare proposals and reports for hundreds of HOPE’s donors. I know many of our donors by name, though I remain anonymous to all but a few. I know about their families, their businesses. I read about them in newspapers and pray for them with colleagues. And I am deeply touched by their sacrificial giving to HOPE’s mission.

But I have favorites…

My favorite donors are not the ones who give the biggest grants. They’re not the ones who give without asking questions or digging into the facts of where their money is going. My favorite donors are those who thoughtfully choose to give unrestricted funding to HOPE.

Unrestricted gifts—donations that aren’t earmarked for specific programs or countries—are the most generous because they give HOPE the flexibility to use resources in the current areas of greatest need. That could mean providing loans to empower entrepreneurs in the Democratic Republic of Congo, a country that continues to rank as one of the most difficult places to run a business in the World Bank’s Doing Business report. That could mean HOPE can recruit, hire, and train more fantastic staff like the savings facilitators serving more than 17,000 clients across the Philippines. It could even mean keeping the lights on in Lancaster, PA, where everyone from accountants to web designers to volunteers to microfinance advisors work hard to help HOPE achieve its core objectives. All these areas are vital (I can’t write in the dark) to HOPE’s mission of proclaiming the Gospel to entrepreneurs living in poverty.

Of course, we love receiving all kinds of donations—earmarked or not. HOPE uses each donation, whether $5 or $500,000, to further the Kingdom through Christ-centered microenterprise development, but unrestricted gifts provide the most leveraged impact. As we continue in our work with HOPE, my prayer is that each of us will be able to see how God uses our contributions and pieces them together into a greater vision.

Archives For generosity

HOPE Intl

HOPE Intl

3 things I learned about generosity in Malawi

HOPE Intl

HOPE Intl

An undeserved gift

Matthew Rohrs

Matthew Rohrs

Week 13: 5 keys for being less stingy with what we know

Keeping Christ central

HOPE Intl

HOPE Intl

What does generosity mean to you?

HOPE Intl

HOPE Intl

Cultivating change

Madelyn Houser

By Madelyn Houser

A grant writer’s two cents on effective giving

About HOPE

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