Dear Friends,
This year marks ten years since NewVines International first set out to bless the poor across East and West Africa. We began that journey with a single tool: the small, zero-interest micro-loan. A decade later, that same conviction — that the poor deserve dignity, opportunity, and the chance to build a better life — has grown into something far larger than we imagined. This report looks back at how far we have come, and shares the fruit of the past year’s work in the field.
Thanks to your faithful partnership, we continue to see lives changed and, increasingly, entire church cultures transformed across Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Tanzania, Côte d’Ivoire, and Burundi. What follows is both a celebration of ten years of God’s faithfulness and an honest account of where we believe He is leading NVI next.
Thank you for standing with us. It remains a privilege to be your partner in all God is doing.
Our Ten-Year Journey: How “Blessing the Poor” Has Grown
NVI started with a sole focus on blessing the poor through micro-lending — small loans intended to give families a first foothold out of poverty. Over ten years of prayer, practice, and watching what actually works on the ground, our understanding of what it means to bless the poor has deepened considerably. Micro-lending remains part of our toolkit, but it is no longer the whole of it.
From Projects to People
Perhaps our clearest lesson has been this: the poor must always come first — before the institution, before the program, before the metrics. We have found, somewhat to our surprise, that what truly works for the very poor works for everyone else as well. As one Parish liaison in Tanzania put it, other organizations tend to arrive wanting to “build capacity” at the parish or institutional level, while NVI takes its training directly to individuals first. That distinction has become central to our identity.
From Program to Mission
We have also moved deliberately toward a mission-based structure and operating philosophy, modeled on the missionary societies of old. In practice, this means simplifying NVI’s own structures to radically promote local responsibility, and giving more attention to ministry and discipleship rather than to meeting program metrics. It is a shift from running a program to sending and equipping missionaries — a shift that now shapes everything we do.
From Financial Literacy to Biblical Ethics and Culture
Financial education and small-business development were where we began, and they remain foundational — this is now known internally as Phase 1: Financial Stewardship. But we came to see that money management alone does not change a culture – and it is mostly culture that is the real driver of poverty. Over the past year we have unveiled Phase 2: Biblical Ethics and Culture, which goes deeper into honesty, fiscal integrity, purity, family life, and public conduct, and is offered only to groups that have truly implemented Phase 1. Alongside it, we have placed growing emphasis on Christ-centered marriage (single parent homes are a key driver of poverty), family unity, and shared spiritual disciplines, and on framing all of this explicitly within Christian discipleship rather than as neutral financial training.
From Handouts to Stewardship
Underneath all of these shifts lies a single change of mindset that we now actively teach and watch take root: moving people from a poverty mindset — “What can I get?” — to a stewardship mindset — “How can I faithfully use what God has given?” This is showing up in the data we watch informally in the field: fewer requests for money, more children fed, more marriage harmony, and, slowly, more tithing.
Independent Validation
This year we also took the step of comparing our program against published research on poverty alleviation. It turns out that our approach — developed over a decade largely through prayer and observation rather than academic design — meets five of five (or four of five, depending on the study) best practices identified in that research. Independent analysts consistently show that single-purpose programs tend to fail (or, at least, not make much of a dent in poverty), because the causes of poverty are not one-dimensional. NVI’s instinct to pursue a “both/and” strategy — financial, ethical, spiritual, and practical — rather than an “either/or” strategy, turns out to be exactly what the evidence supports.
At the heart of everything we do is one goal: to align family life, church life, work, ethics, and culture with biblical values in practical, sustainable ways.
