1. Joshua & Fastina's Fish Farm in Malawi Manyamula Village is hours away from Lake Malawi, so the only fish that arrives there is dried. Joshua and Fastina saw the opportunity to sell fresh fish. They used a SIA Small Business Fund grant of $150 to stock their newly-dug fish pond in Manyamula, Malawi last year. The business has been so successful that they have expanded to three fish ponds, started beekeeping, and sent their daughter to a private school. They have Shared th

It’s not often that international aid is featured on the editorial pages of a major newspaper. So I was excited and pleasantly surprised to see the New York Times Editorial Board write the opinion Foreign aid is having a reckoning. The authors start by outlining the problem. For example, “planeloads of free American corn can help famine victims in the short term, but they can also put local farmers out of business, making the food supply in the long term more precarious.” Aid

“Generosity with strings is not generosity; it is a deal.” ~Marya Mannes **This blog post is taken from my sharing at UMC Point Richmond last Sunday. You can watch the service here and I start around minute 34. The aim of Spirit in Action is true generosity – with transformational, rather than transactional, relationships. From what I’ve heard from my friends in Africa, many grants can feel more like a deal than an act of generosity. Some large granting organizations are sti

“We all can make a difference. We’ll start by looking within, from dependence to ascendance. Come on all, let’s shift the power. “You got the power in your hand to make a positive change in the land. Alone I can go real fast but when we put our hands together we can go way past. How do you know? There is power in unity. Everything we want is right there in the community.” These powerful words are from the song Shift the Power Zambia (watch the music video below!). It’s a catc