Helping People to Help Themselves

One of our missions in our ministry is to help people to help themselves, so they in turn can help other people. While in Ethiopia, we worked with several church pastors to accomplish this mission. Although we couldn't help everyone that we talked to, after interviewing many people who have a desire to help themselves so they can eventually help other people, we finally connected with a young lady who wanted to own her own taxi. We learned from experience that the best way to help someone is not from "handouts" but by giving them the opportunity that was not available to them previously. The opportunity that she didn't have was access to money. It can be very difficult to get a loan in many developing countries and Ethiopia is no different. We found that the best way that we could help is by lending the funds to start a business and as funds are paid back to continue the process for someone else by re-lending the same funds. In this particular case, we funded the opportunity for this young entrepreneur to start a taxi business. We will keep everyone up to date as this business venture continues to grow.