Five Talents – Dale Stanton-Hoyle

(Jan 22, 2018) Catherine Read interviews Dale Stanton-Hoyle, Executive Director of Five Talents. Five Talents is a micro-enterprise development organization (MED) aimed at eradicating extreme global poverty by restoring human dignity and creating strong, sustainable communities. Their mission is to transform lives through economic empowerment.

The Anglican and Episcopal Churches came together 20 years ago to found the organization, with the goal of helping to reduce poverty in the poorest places on Earth. Micro-enterprise development organizations do not give out loans to people in these countries, however they do train facilitators. A facilitator helps to form a group of 20 interested citizens who decide that they want to come together to help strengthen their community. They form their own constitution, determine interest rates and lending criteria, and save as much as they can over a set period of time.   Once they pool their resources, the group invites community members in to make a business “pitch”, then together they determine who will receive loans and how much money will be lent.

These loans are very small, but can have an immediate and extraordinary impact. A larger loan might be given for the purchase of an animal, like a cow, where the owner could sell the milk for profit. On a much smaller scale, the loan could be for something as simple as a tea service, so a woman could make and sell tea at the market in her town. Stanton-Hoyle shares that both of these examples give the individual the opportunity for financial independence and helps lift them out of dependence and poverty. Many times, the facilitators will help others in their community think about how they can leverage local resources and tap into their individual talents – weather it be cooking, driving, sewing, etc. The unique nature of Five Talents is that they train local citizens who understand the culture and the communities in which they live. This helps them to cultivate talent and empower community members.

Women receive approximately 90% of the loans that are given by lending groups working under the Five Talents umbrella. Many women in the poorest countries are unemployed, and lack the confidence and schooling needed to start their own business. Having mentors to help understand how to both run and grow a business is instrumental in their success. Many women tend to re-invest money back in their families and their communities, making them ideal recipients of micro-loans. The loans also help lift up families, and provide strong role models for young girls.

The Five Talents model also helps to build resiliency in impoverished communities. Stanton-Hoyle recounted a story about a lending group that worked in South Sudan, one of the poorest countries in the world. As civil war erupted, and citizens were displaced to refugee camps, the graduates of the Five Talents program took their lending circle skills with them.   These mentors helped refugees understand their assets and talents, which enabled them to organize and start small enterprises for basic services like babysitting, tailoring, shoe repair, etc. The education that the mentors received from Five Talents is something that they took with them, and in turn enabled them to improve their own lives and the lives of those in their communities.