Hello SIA friends! After a much-needed break, I am back in the SIA office and working through the photos, memories, reports, and stories from the trip. Part of difficulty in returning from any SIA trip to Africa is that the daily work of site visits is so different from SIA desk work in North America. What do site visit days looks like? Samson and Sharon from Universal Love Alliance (SIA partners in Uganda) wrote up the following summary about the three days that Barbara and

Last week I wrote about Denis Kasambala, a sixteen year old boy who received the gift of a piglet from his community in Manyamula, Malawi in May 2017. (Read the story of the gift-giving here.) The members of the local Manyamula COMSIP Cooperative wanted to encourage and support Denis in making a better life for himself. His mother died when he was 9 years old and his father is often missing due to alcoholism. So Denis and his five siblings live with their uncle, who also has

The community has “taken a firm stand to root Denis into success,” says Canaan Gondwe. Denis received a piglet from the community May 2017. This story was originally published in our Fall 2017 Newsletter. I’ll be posting a very exciting update to the story next week on the blog. In May and June [2017] I spent three weeks visiting folks connected with Spirit in Action in Kenya and Malawi. With my team – Mike Hegeman, Dana Belmonte, and Boyd Cothran – we met with seven communit

Animals act as investments for SIA grant partners. Families use their savings to buy goats, pigs, chickens, and even cows. Then they can sell them when they need cash. Animal manure can improve crop output and the meat, eggs, and milk can enhance diets. Chickens In addition to being investments and a good source of inexpensive protein, chickens are also gifts. Family members may bring a live chicken to relatives when they visit. “Guests bring meat,” a friend in Malawi told us

“The camera is right here!” I try – successfully! – to get a selfie with a cow at a Megabridge Foundation farm in Kenya. After our visit, Joseph wrote: “We appreciate that you found time to visit our project. Your team was the first “Wazungu” (Swahili for white people) to visit a homestead in the village; a particular honor to the family that hosted the team. The team’s visit to the project has elicited a lot of publicity and interest among the community wishing to learn amon

These healthy piglets were raised by recent high school graduates, who received SIA grants. They are now ready to be shared to widows in the community. Last week I heard another story of pay-it-forward generosity. A chain of 457 people each offered to pay for the drink of the person behind them at the Florida Starbucks drive-thru. There’s something about generosity. When we see other people giving we also want to give. My Facebook feed has been flooded (no pun intended) with

Sometimes giving the perfect gift is more fun than receiving and unwrapping a gift, right? Do you know that feeling of knowing just the right gift for someone, and being in the position to get it for them? It’s exciting! This excitement of giving is right at the center of our Small Business Fund (SBF) program. Spirit in Action gives grants of $150 to families to start a small business and then this family is called to “pay-it-forward” to another family. They get a chance to b

What difference can the gift of one pig make? One of the key components of SIA’s Small Business Fund (SBF) is the concept of “Sharing the Gift”, which encourages groups that receive small business grants from SIA to pay it forward to others in their community. As Boyd Cothran wrote in the Fall 2009 SIA Newsletter, “We take small amounts and give entrepreneurs in developing countries the opportunity to succeed. We don’t ask that they pay us back but that they use their success