A Profitable Education
Businessman shares knowledge for a better bottom line
At his own insurance agency, where he can look down at the traffic of Interstate 66 crawling into Washington, D.C., Jeff Johnson, BS Business Administration ’75 and a past president of the Alumni Association, constantly uses complex business tactics and strategies to keep his business rolling. Yet this past February, working with groups of entrepreneurs in small Episcopal churches in the northern mountain region of Luzon in the Philippines, Johnson went back to the basics.
As part of the faith-based nonprofit organization Five Talents International, Johnson traveled to Luzon and the city of Manila as part of a Business as Mission Program to hold two-day training seminars for local entrepreneurs. Teaching business planning, marketing, and recordkeeping, Johnson met many business owners struggling to get out of poverty, some of whom came from so far away they had to sleep in the church lodgings to stay for the second day.
For men and women in developing nations where the majority of people live on less than $2 a day, small businesses, such as sari saris (mini-convenience stores usually run out of people’s homes), carpentry, and soap making, can mean the difference between living in poverty and earning a living. Since 2000, the Vienna, Virginia-based Five Talents has funded loan programs, in partnership with the Anglican Church, for thousands of poor entrepreneurs in the Philippines, as well as Rwanda, Nigeria, and nine other countries. The loans make it possible for men and women in these areas to start their own businesses. With weekly fellowship meetings and community support, Five Talents volunteers say that the repayment rate is excellent.
“These are poor people who are looking for opportunities to use their skills,” says Nancy Green, director of development for Five Talents, who traveled with Johnson to the Philippines. “They are thirsty for knowledge and want to be able to feed their families and send their kids to school.”
Johnson will never forget some of the loan recipients he met in the Philippines. One of the most ambitious entrepreneurs was Reuben, a local tricycle taxi owner who dreamed of expanding his business to selling insurance and helping other taxi owners, who are often illiterate, register their vehicles. Another loan recipient was Edna, an elderly woman with eight children, who started a piggery to help pay college tuition for her eldest son. In addition, Johnson was encouraged by a group of women who decided during one of the sessions to join together to support each other in their handmade craft businesses and make their sales more profitable.
“It was so satisfying to see the progress we made as the seminars progressed,” says Johnson. “Five Talents fulfilled my desire to help people and do it in an effective way—by using my skills as a businessman—and that’s very gratifying.” Johnson says he became involved with Five Talents because he agrees so wholeheartedly with its mission. “It is a dignified way to help the poor,” he says. “The money goes in right at the ground [level] and gets to the people who need the help.”
Since the trip to the Philippines, Johnson has been active in Five Talents locally as well, helping to organize an X-Out Poverty Golf Tournament to raise money for the organization. He hopes to go on more trips to give more business advice to merchants and entrepreneurs in other countries.
Five Talents loan recipients
Alumnus Jeff Johnson with Joe Paulini and Nancy Green of Five Talents meet with The Most Rev. Ignacio Soliba (center), Prime Bishop of the Episcopal Church in the Philippines