Hear our latest news and meet our newest intern - Thomas Payne.  We call him T-Payne and he just finished his first year at the Naval Academy.

I spent much of last Thursday and Friday at the DPAC attending the Advance 09 conference. The Advance 09 Conference brought together some of America's best Christian pastors (Driscoll, Chandler, Piper and our own JD Greear among others) to speak on the resurgence of the Church in America. It was absolutely amazing. More than 2,700 folks from all over the country came to Durham to hear what God was doing in the world and what he calls us all to do.

I met lots of folks from places as far away as Seattle and including West Virginia, Louisville, Little Rock, and Grand Rapids Michigan to name a few. One of the folks, that left the greatest impression though, was a missons pastor from Redeemer church in Winston Salem named Francis Smith.

I met him briefly yesterday when he stopped by the DurhamCares table. He talked about how he had grown up in Durham in Braggtown and then moved north to Bahama. He then went on to tell me the origin of the name of this area north of Durham (named by combining the last names of the 3 families who first settled there) and why it wasn't pronounced like the islands off the coast of Florida. When I asked him if he would participate in a new 30-second-video project that we are doing that asks people why they love Durham (he was born here and does love it, so he'd qualify) and what it means for them to love their neighbor, he politely declined. Well, he came back today telling me that he would like to participate after all. It seems that he had told the story last night to his wife who urged him to seize this opportunity during which he might share something with others. And so, he did do the interview. (it and many others like it will be brought online in our new video section which should hopefully make it's debut before the end of the month).

I had told him, of course, all about DurhamCares and how we are working to encourage people in Durham to become engaged in their city through volunteer matching, trips to Durham and Succcess Grants. He definitely got it, and was encouraged by our inspiration from the Parable of the Good Samaritan. I was very impressed with his wisdom, born from many years in the mission field abroad and right here in North Carolina. He had many things to say about engagement, and I'll only list a few here.

I hope that you find them as encouraging and challenging as I did, but I fear that I may not do them justice, and it sure was great to hear them from his mouth, and not my feeble typing:

1. Don't buy a new shovel. I know that sounds a bit strange, but it makes all the sense in the world if you think about it, and no, it has nothing to do with the recession and a desire to cut back on new purchases. Francis said that someone had once told him that it's a good idea to borrow a shovel (or other tool) even if you have one. Why? Well, because that gives you an opportunity to engage with your neighbor. Ask him or her how they are doing and what's going on in their life. Mostly conversations will be short and pleasant, but sometimes your neighbor might even bring up issues that you might help them sort out or encourage them on. Either way, you'll both be better for it. Such conversations might never happen if you have the most complete tool collection out there. By the way, I tried that tonight out of a genuine need for milk, and a strong desire not to go to the store. He's right, I very much enjoyed my brief visit with my neighbor and I think that he felt the same.
2. Is it safe? I know, this sounds like some sort of plug for the movie Marathon Man. No, this isn't about the famous interchange between Laurence Olivier and Dustin Hoffman, it's about confronting your fears as you seek to help your neighbor in an unfamiliar neighborhood. Francis shared with me a story of a woman who he got to know at his church. He had encouraged her to volunteer at a mission in an unfamiliar part of town. She asked, "Is it safe?" His response: "No, but then again in this world now, nothing is completely." Several months later she saw him again in church and she came up to him to tell him that she was indeed volunteering and helping with kids in this impoverished area of town. Francis asked her, "Well, did you find out that it's safe?" Her answer: "No, but I love working with the kids." I found this story to be strikingly honest and consistent with my limited experience. God calls us to honor him in all sorts of ways and stretches us beyond our comfort level, as he did with this woman, but he blesses us (and those we seek to serve) when we do so.
3. Don't just drive through.  Over the course of his career he has been strongly influenced by John Perkins who told him that it's not just enough for us to drive into challenged neighborhoods each day and assist our brothers on the other side of town, but that it's far better to move in alongside them and to live amongst them. (And then to resist the urge to spend a lot in up-fitting the house to our old standards.) For then, true barriers will come down. I found this last part very challenging to internalize and candidly (as if I'd be anything but), I don't see moving our family any time soon. BUT, I found a lot of wisdom in what he said and it's going to encourage me to do more when I visit these neighborhoods. Lest I feel too pleased with myself about the lengths that I'm going, I'll be inspired on knowing that there is yet far more that I can do. I do wish, though, that I had the courage to do exactly what Perkins suggests. Maybe there will be a time for that in my life.

Francis, THANK YOU for coming back to Durham for the conference. Thank you for stopping by the DurhamCares booth today, and thank you for sharing this encouragement with me. Thank you for loving your neighbor!

As you may recall, I promised to write a series of blogs about entrepreneurship. As an entrepreneur, I am remarkably biased about entrepreneurship, but I do think that the creativity, innovation and hard work that it requires can be a big part of Durham's economic development and resurgence. As entrepreneurs develop plans to engage in the community through volunteerism programs for their companies and employees (see bandwidthcares.org for an example), I think that entrepreneurship will bring much more to Durham than just the creation of wealth and jobs (though those are good goals as well, of course....particularly when that new found wealth is reinvested back in the community).

I firmly believe that the seeds for entrepreneurship can be sown very early in life. LemonadeDay (please see the blog on this from last week) hits on this concept, and so do video games. Video Games? Yes, video games. The folks from the Acton Foundation for Entrepreneurship have created a series of compelling video games to engage youth in learning the basics of entrepreneurship. http://www.actonsims.com/

If your kids are like my kids, video games are a huge draw. Kimberley and I don't have video games at the house but do allow our boys (we have 3, ages 3,5,7) to play games on my iphone when we are travelling. This has worked great for us, as it takes away some of the tedium of long wait in the airport, even if we just limit it to 30 minutes. The draw, though, of video games is so great that it's enough to tell them that they can play them later in the trip to keep them well behaved and excited. I'm not sure if video games had the same control over me while growing up, but the games (pong, then space invaders and pacman) weren't nearly as good as the ones that are out now. Ok, so far I'm not telling you anything that you didn't already know. So here goes:
You'll see from the actonsims website that there are several different games to play.

There are single player games like Galactic Zappers that teach kids how to overcome operations bottlenecks, and multiplayer games like Price Point. One of Acton's games that has been reviewed by gamesforchange.org that seems to have gotten some traction:
From: http://www.gamesforchange.org/main/gameprof/731

RoboRush! is meant to teach students how to build a business from the ground up. Students will start a small robot-manufacturing business through grassroots methods: pursuing sales, running efficient operations, and learning to say ‘no' to less-profitable customer requests. As the student progresses they will have the opportunity to scale up the business by making sound decisions and taking risks. In growing the business the student has the opportunity to hire staff, open a storefront, and even open a factory. As they do, they will find that the game play becomes more challenging as they find that managing staff, monitoring demand, and balancing profitability are not as easy as they may have originally imagined.

Another game associated with helping youth get interested in entrepreneurship is from the NFIB Young Entrepreneur Foundation is Johnny Money: www.NFIB.com/jmog. This looks to be worth checking out as well. Undoubtedly there are more online games as well, and I hope that folks add to this list in the comment section.

I still think that the best way to teach kids about entrepreneurship is through LemonadeDay.org, but as that program is designed to run once a year (though there's nothing holding kids back, of course, from doing it more frequently), these video games may present part of the solution for planting the seeds of entrepreneurship in Durham's kids from an early age...seeds that will hopefully sprout, grow and flourish to Durham's benefit for many years to come.

Check out our new Durham digs!

Pardon the interruption from the series on domestic entrepreneurship issues for a quick blog on international entrepreneurship.

I write this with a bit of caution, as the last thing that I want to do is to dampen anyone's interest in microfinance. Microfinance is now, and for my money, always will be, a remarkably effective way to alleviate worldwide poverty.

BUT, I think that it's important that donors/funders/investors understand the current climate for microfinance so that they can be very smart with their giving and as always, (but more difficult to do than you'd think) do no harm.

When we were on the DurhamCares trip to India we visited several different economic development programs. It was during one such visit, in Chennai, that I actually started to think that a microfinance bubble might be imminent, at least one that would impact many urban environments where microfinance institutions (MFI) have become quite popular. The Director of the program we visited lamented the loss of some of their best borrowing groups to competing MFIs. In some cases, he had trained and nurtured savings groups for more than 2 years, steadily increasing the amounts that these women borrowed from him as they proved through their business models and repayment history that they could service larger amounts. These women (this MFI, as most do, lent primarily to women) had received important training on subjects from extending credit to customers to the basics of marketing. Now, in one day, a new loan officer from a new organization would come in and offer the women double the amount that they had previously borrowed.

These women often jumped at the chance to double the amount of money that they could borrow as they eyed more and more things that they might do with an increased sum of money. In some cases this money was spent on their business, in some cases for weddings and in others the purchase of consumer goods. Studies have also shown that there is a disturbing increase in the number of poor who have multiple loans to different MFIs, in some cases taking the proceeds from one loan to pay off another. In other words, these women are subject to the same temptations and challenges that MANY OF US have experienced with easy credit, not any different from what so many American have witnessed and experienced with credit card debt, and yes, with easy-to-come-by mortgages. The question, of course, is what will be the long term impact of this "easy credit" as each dollar borrowed more than the one before has a lower incremental benefit, of course, and with it a lower chance of being able to produce the income needed to pay it back.

Now if it was just a US-based telecom guy throwing out some concern, I'd likely take all of this with a grain of salt, but these concerns have been shared by others that I've talked to in the MFI industry as well. Most also have particular concerns with cities like Chennai where MFI saturation has reached such a point that the vast majority of the poor are served, often times with multiple loans.

Ok, so what to do with this information/opinion? The most important thing is to NOT stop investing in MFIs (pardon the double negative here, it just makes the point better). The key is to invest a bit more smartly, and as with any investment (as all of our charitable giving/investing should be) research the organizations and ask the right questions.

Some questions you should ask include: are MFIs operating in environments underserved or is current demand met by existing supply? what percentage of the MFI's customers have multiple loans? What percentage are in urban areas? Does the charity permit direct funding to rural initiatives? What type of training programs does the MFI run and how frequently? Of course, it's also great to visit these institutions in the field. While this seems daunting, DurhamCares trips (http://www.durhamcares.org/index.php/trips) cost less than $1,500 and only involve 3 days out of the country and focus on some great MFIs.

Remember, 80% of the world's poor DO NOT YET have access to microfinance funds and desperately need it. That is 400 million entrepreneurs!

The rural poor generally and many selective pockets of the urban poor [consider HUGE urban centers like Brazzaville, Bangui, etc.] are vastly underserved by this amazing program that provides dignity rather than dependency, and a hand up rather than a hand out. However, serving the rural poor is often less attractive due to political and economic instability and are often not as profitable as serving the urban poor in more stable economies. The reason for this has much to do with the operating expenses of fielding a caseworker. For instance, a rural caseworker might visit a small fraction of borrowing groups during the day as in urban areas. This obviously drives up the operating costs of distributing and administrating the loans and conducting trainings.

Many MFIs targeting rural or less "attractive" urban pockets may not be profitable now or ever and as a result don't receive much money from the international "for profit" private equity funding sources, and therefore are very much in need of outside donations (to an operating fund) or investments (to a loan fund typically returning 3-5% net to the investor). In fact, while urban MFIs might make 10-20% to the bottom line (part of the reason that money is now chasing them), many rural MFIs might lose 20%. BUT, another way of looking at a loss of 20% is to think that such an operation is 80% sustainable. Compare 80% sustainability with the 0% sustainability that so much of our international giving and aid has gotten, and even poorly performing microfinance (if administered correctly in the field characterized by serviceable loan amounts and good training) looks like a Godsend.

So PLEASE consider microfinance as a part of your overseas funding! It's very much needed and can be amazingly effective for all the reasons listed above. But, go in armed with questions that you should ask, with eyes wide open, and with a prayerful heart.

..........................

Note:
Noticeably absent from this short piece is any information related to another component of microfinance: SCA (Savings and Credit Associations) promote savings among groups of poor people, facilitating interest rate savings (as groups of savings often meet bank minimums for initial deposit) and lending to each other out of their shared pool. These groups are not susceptible to the same bubble and are a very worthy recipient of your attention and investment. For the best that I've seen check out the Chalmers Center www.chalmers.org), as a great institution dedicated exclusively to the training of lay workers in the field in SCA. Also Hope International, (www.hopeinternational.org) is a MFI that strongly advocates SCAs in addition to the more traditional lending practices that they do. Since their approach addresses both financial AND spiritual poverty as a Christ led organization, they work more relationally with clients in mostly underserved countries like the Congo and, in my opinion, are better suited to weather any correction that takes MFIs to something less than 100% sustainability.

We hope you'll be able to join us to Celebrate Durham - tonight 6pm at the American Tobacco Campus downtown Durham!

Last week I was asked to moderate a panel as a part of a conference on entrepreneurship at the Kauffman Foundation in Kansas City. With so much that I learned top of mind, and as this topic is of great interest to David and I, and something we think that Durham very much needs more of I'm going to dedicate the next 5 blogs to the topic of entrepreneurship.

Installment #1: How Lemonade can transform Durham. A study of lemonadeday and why we need to bring it to Durham

Installment #2: Video Games, and why they may be the answer to youth entrepreneurship in Durham

Installment #3: Virgin Money - how friends and families can invest more safely with those they know

Installment #4: HotShotBusiness.com

Installment #5: The new entrepreneurship initiative in Durham Public Schools

How Lemonade Can Transform Durham
A study of LemonadeDay and why we need to bring it to Durham

Michael Holthouse is a remarkably inspiring man. When you click on the video link that follows this post you'll see exactly what I mean. His enthusiasm is infectious and you know that he's a man that won't be denied. He was a very successful entrepreneur selling his company for a good sum of money to Sprint in 1997 and committed his life to working with disadvantaged youth. We were talking about our faith and how God can speak to us through our vocations. When he went to illustrate the point I heard the story of lemonadeday.

3 years ago his 10 year old daughter woke him up at 6:30 on a Saturday morning after he had come in late from a Friday night gala event. He had promised her that he'd help her with a lemonade stand as she was set on buying a new iPod, one that he had told her she'd need to earn, even though he could obviously afford to buy it for her. So blurry eyed he set out to do just that. Together they got the materials from the pantry and began to make batches of lemonade while he talked and asked questions of her relating to price, sales pitch, and inventory and later in the morning they went out to sell her wares. She did very well. At first she thought that all of the money was hers, but her Dad then told her that she needed to repay for the materials that she had used, and that some of the money left over needed to go to people less fortunate than they.

The experience was so rewarding for both of them that Michael set out to encourage other families in Houston to do the same. One year later, he set up the first lemonade day in Houston by working with schools and community partners. In one day 2,500 lemonade stands were set up all over the city! A year later, they did it again. This time 11,000! Just 2 weeks ago on May 3 there were 17,450 stands selling 2.4 million glasses of lemonade! At a rate of a few glasses per customer, he estimates that more than 1million people in Houston were touched by this initiative and many more in first year events in Austin, Detroit and his small hometown in Indiana.

The success and the scale of lemonadeday isn't what's most impressive about this project. What is most impressive is how such a simple concept that we are all familiar with can teach so many valuable lessons and provide so much benefit to the children of Durham and ultimately to the city at large.

0. FAMILIES. This is an activity that brings families together. Michael talks warmly about how much he enjoyed working on this project with his daughter and to see her excitement. She undoubtedly thought the same. The same can be said, I'm sure, of brothers/sisters/mothers/cousins and even grandparents that participated in other lemonade stands.
0. ECON 101. The entrepreneurial lessons are many. Basic lessons regarding pricing/competition/raw materials/gross margin/profit/cash flow and inventory are all taught in easily applied lessons. One more that might not be so obvious: owner's equity. Usually friends will stop by to help. At the end of the day many will think they're entitled to an equal share of the till. Watch the look on your child's face as they explain that it was they that set it all up, found the spot to sell, and ultimately took the risk. They've just learned a great lesson on ownership, risk and profit sharing.
0. CHARITY. Parents have a great opportunity to encourage kids to take some of the money earned and invest in local charities. In Houston, kids gave away more than $250,000 to local charities. Lemonade stands are effectively teaching entrepreneurship AND philanthropy.
0. TITHING. Think that your explanations to your children on why you put money in the offering plate each Sunday (and how much) ring a bit hollow? This will help them understand how to return the tithe back to God.
0. ACCOMPLISHMENT. It's a beautiful thing to see your child rewarded from their hard work and then enjoy the fruits of their labors. Their new iPod, trip to the movies, or new pair of Crocs will give them a sense of fulfillment and appreciation not attributed to anything else they own.

Now, please watch the attached video and let us know if you'd like to be involved with us at DurhamCares in bringing this to Durham!

I write this entry as I try to assimilate a Sunday school lesson that I received yesterday. The teacher, an elder in my Church, was going through the 4th chapter of James along with the help of past sermons by our senior pastor, old writing by Jonathan Edwards from 1747 and even some Tim Keller, for good measure. I found all that he shared inspiring and convicting at the same time, but it is one specific subject that has stuck with me since.

In it is the admonition to not be "of this world." The one application in my life that is often times most "worldly", is the way that I judge success or failure. This is important to me as we contemplate the success or failure of the rollout of the Success Grant, and the "worldly" target of an arbitrary number of people to help seed the concept of this program, (http://www.durhamcares.org/index.php/grant/). Candidly, I've been slightly discouraged at the rate of pick up, for what we think is a very unique and effective way to give to charities. I've been confused by how easy it was to get 350 folks to register for the ESPN DurhamCares pool, yet so challenging to get the word out about the Success Grant program.

In an effort to boost awareness of the Success Grant program, we've offered up my hair and a party with a live band at the American Tobacco Complex (on the terrace next to Tyler's) this coming Thursday. I think that both are fine promotions and I do look forward to seeing so many friends and folks very interested in caring about Durham on Thursday.

Sometimes it is absolutely wonderful and awesome to see how God humbles us, and I am particularly grateful for being reminded of this so early in DurhamCares history. For what we work toward should not be about the Success Grant, the success and popularity of DurhamCares, me nor my hair, or frankly even about Durham. It SHOULD be about glorifying God. For it is the desire to glorify him with our time, talents and treasure that led David and I to start DurhamCares.

So, we may very well hit our goal of 350 individuals pledging through the Success Grant program, and my hair may very well come off with hoots and hollers on Thursday. That in and of itself though, will not be success; however, it should make for some good entertainment. Success will come from the Kindgdom of God being ushered in to Durham where our citizens will band together, lift up the name of God, celebrate in unison the Good News and love our neighbor as ourselves. We've got quite a long way to go and I'm thrilled to be on the journey with all of you.

So, just an update on 3 things for you:

0. Henry's hair is still on the line and getting longer and longer everyday!  Right now we have 144 people pledging towards our goal of 350. Thanks to everyone who has already made a pledge.  If you haven't yet would you take a look at the site and make a pledge and then tell a friend as well? www.durhamcares.org/index.php/grant.
0. To celebrate Durham (and hopefully shave Henry's hair!) we'll be having an event at Tyler's in the American Tobacco Complex from 6-8pm next Thursday 5/21. This will be a really fun time to meet up with your neighbors, hear some live music, buy some good food and drink from a local establishment and celebrate lots of great things happening in Durham.
0. We've upgraded the pledging functionality on our website to make it easier to pledge to great organizations in Durham and to make multiple pledges at once. Check it out: www.durhamcares.org/index.php/grant and make a pledge.

If you have any questions, suggestions, or feedback don't hesitate to contact me, Heather Jones, at hjones@durhamcares.org.