Indonesia, Asia

IDN01 - Bluebird Group - Micro-funding and Development: Partnership Reports



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Report Date: May 13, 2020

Bluebird Response to Corona Virus Conditions

Recent Events

Believer Groups Base, pre-Corona

Pre-Corona in January 2020, we had a base of 299,000+ believers in hundreds of groups in every province of Indonesia and 19 other countries. We ended the year with a 63% increase over 12 months, slightly below our historical average. This network has needs during the Corona crisis, and its 55,000 leaders over 23 generations of groups are doing our Corona response. 

All 8 of our 16 movement leaders, leading sets of 20,000 to 60,000 believers each, are struggling with the volume of data collection. Especially data on our leaders’ groups was weak, though leaders’ groups are the backbone of our movement.  We hired 8 part-time data managers to come alongside these 8 most fruitful Indonesian leaders who have over 20,000 in their network.  We must revise our system of tracking leaders’ groups but we felt doing so would be almost an impossible number of work hours, especially when I considering the limited people with this skill to do it.  

Our small groups are thousands or hundreds of believers in every province of Indonesia, and in 19 other countries . . . the geographic and linguistic challenges have increased. We should translate our Indonesian training materials into English so they can be translated into other languages as 4 others are asking.  Doing so will take a huge number of work hours, but we started.  

Phase 1 : March 15 to April 15 – Crafting our Response

Mid March we began pressing our Indonesian movement leaders to stop meeting with people and protect themselves, and pass on this pattern to other generations to protect our key leaders especially, as they are older. The normal ways we expensed budgeted programs slowed in these 4 categories:  reinterpreted religious commemoration gatherings, community development trainings and services with gatherings, leaders’ meetings and trainings, and trips to equip leaders’ groups.  We increased expenses in shipping data charts, and sending medicine stocks to our 16 leading men for the protection of themselves and their key leaders.  

In mid March when many normal activities were stopped by self-quarantine, I began the desk-intensive project of revising our leaders’ group tracking system. My data assistants were hit by Covid, slowing this project and underlining the need for risk reduction to protect key leaders throughout our network. 

During the slowdown of Corona, we are more intensively working on the heavy project of translating into English 38 study series for group discussion.  We are improving the quality of these as we go, and doing some new ones relevant to Corona context.  

There is a very strong emotional shaking of our movement leaders and their key leaders, people look for a father to comfort and resolve their problems. A lot of pastoral mentoring is being done via telephone at every level of leadership. Though I have led many crisis responses after earthquakes, tsunamis, tornados and volcanic eruptions, the impact of this crisis on our leaders is heavier and solutions more complex.  This is an opportune time to do leadership development  in these skill sets: how to mentor compassionately, how to lead pragmatically in upheaval, how to build creative problem solving in leaders’ groups, how to strengthen relative independence of leaders under each leader.  

Our long established style of decentralizing leadership meant that each of the 16 movement leaders wrestled to get feedback from their leaders, to assess needs and obstacles, to discover best practices in crisis response, to share best practices with other leaders, to address varied and changing contexts.  This process was and is fluid, with ongoing changes.  By the end of March, I gave permission to 4 of our leaders to revise their use of Standard Budget funds experimentally to find best solutions forward, with agreement to remain consistent with planned outcomes and broad expense categories we had communicated to donors.   

Phase 2 :  April 15 to May 15 – Nutrition Relief, Shortening Economic Systems, Job Restarts & Build Capacity

Based on ongoing feedback from 4 of our most fruitful movement leaders, a plan was developed for Phase 2, and its guidelines identified. Consulting with our leaders’ experimental efforts to find best practices was in keeping with our long term style of getting ideas from our creative leaders and cross pollinating these to our other leaders.  

New Corona funds were given for a special Corona budget. In this phase we distributed $20,000 for our 1) Nutrition for the Hungriest program which has been distributed through our networks of groups, clusters and regional leaders.  This money was distributed to movement leaders on the basis of 7 cents per believer, then was distributed in packets of about US$10 to selected families based on 1) lost job or income and already spent their reserves, 2) with priority on those actively involved in leadership in our multi-generational system of small groups. We are providing seeds or plant starts to those who will plant them on their small properties.  

Our leaders are assisting to 2) Shorten Economic Systems within our networks, in tandem with our Nutrition program. Using our leadership network to provide links between sellers to buyers, to negotiate best prices by buying in bulk, and cutting out middle men, cuts costs, reduces risk of Covid because we can ensure healthy practices internally, and stabilizes planning for agribusinessmen.  Shortening economic systems within our networks will be an increasing focus, since we believe this will help our people to restart their income and stabilize. It will help them add value to others and thus win social capital which they can use for the spread of the gospel. 

3) Job Restarts: Unemployed leaders were chosen for employment as couriers to transport food to needy sectors. Other Corona jobs are sewers of masks, makers of home sanitizers, makers of locally produced chicken feed with probiotics, farmers given seeds and animal stock, and backyard fishfarms to provide a local protein source. A limited number of micro-loans for small businesses were provided. This category will be the next to increase in each of the next phases.

Strategic features: drawing on the riches of our network of linked leaders, strengthening leaders’ brotherhood bonds, and building leaders’ capacity through exercise of leadership during crisis.  Strengthening loyal brotherhood bonds by giving to or through our leaders builds capacity. Leaders are learning about compassionate leadership, about organizing around social capital in social networks, sharing from the Word and comforting via social media. Leaders are learning to be more independent.  

Standard Budget: Initially I assumed we would need to revise the use of funds given to Standard Budget based on our Annual Plan determined prior to Corona.  But because of special giving for Corona programs, some cash reserves, and because only “short” revisions are made within categories and towards goals given to donors, we have operated in our changed context in alignment with our prior donor communications. 

Current Conditions 

We have grieved by 99 Corona deaths in our network of small groups.  Reports of hunger and inability to buy and sell food are reported widely throughout the country, for many people’s income had stopped and their reserves were quickly exhausted. The problem is more acute in densely populated areas, particularly due to factories collapsing. Entrance to some cities are blocked, only local residents are allowed to pass. Goods are not being shipped to remote areas, where hunger is a big issue. The scale of brokenness and negative impact of family economies and their ability to eat is startling and seems to be on a much greater scale than fear of Covid. 

Our men and their key leaders are managing programs primarily via phone contact from within their houses to reduce risk. They are on the phone much of the day listening to problems, running small group meetings developing leaders, and mentoring with discussion and prayer. They are mobilizing local mentors to do limited face to face ministry. At this time we are looking for increased group studies and leaders’ meetings after Whats App recently increased capacity to 8 people on a call.  

Our Q1 fruit reports coming in late show a slower than normal increase in believer groups.  If this crisis goes like past crises, there will be a slowdown in our fruit though Q2, but we feel at some point fruit will begin to increase faster than normal. However, we don’t know what the longer term effect will be of greatly reduced face to face interactions.    

 

Plans for the Future

Phase 3 :  May 12 -June 15  

We will distribute $20,000 from the Corona budget for 1) Nutrition program 2) Shorten Economic Systems and 3) Job Restarts. In this phase or the next, the Shorten Economic Systems and Job Restarts will increase.  

In this phase we expect to increase expenditures from our Standard Budget with ‘short’ revisions for 4) Social Media for leaders. Some of our leaders have sold their phones to buy food and others are planning to do so. This is a security risk, costly to buy phones in the future, and stops our communication with leaders and their development via phone. We are planning to buy their phones and keep them until things are stabilized, then return them.  We are also buying phone minutes and data packets to increase communication ease. We also pay some temporary salaries for developers of our discipling materials in social media form. 

We also expect to pay more for 5) Grief & Medical Expenses to families of leaders who have died, we have a category for that in our standard budget.  

We expect to finish our extensive revision of Tracking Revision in this phase and have a good start on upgrading our Leaders’ Groups data.  We expect to finish most of our extensive revision of 38 English language discussion series for froups, and have a good start on upgrading our Indonesian versions of the same.  

We don’t expect these efforts will immediately increase spiritual fruit, for the restraining factor of no face to face time in a face to face culture cannot be fully overcome by increased cell phone usage, particularly as many people lack the money to keep their phones or buy minutes or wifi.

Yet we feel a compassionate response via our Corona programs and the Leaders’ Group Tracking and Word Series are building important infrastructure for moving towards 1 million believers, and is wise stewardship of the options before us at this time.  

Phase 4 :  June 15 to July 15

We are planning to implement the same 5 Corona programs, but hope with the $35,000 budget we can begin decreasing our Nutrition Program in this phase and hope to increase our investment in Shortened Economic Systems, Social Media for Leaders, and even Job Restarts.  Business Restarts will require better opportunity to meet with people than we have now. When we do intensify this program, we will start with 50% loans/50% grants to groups to help businesses restart. After a time these will transition to 75% loans/25% grants and then to 100%/0, a transition model we have implemented successfully after other crises.  

Selected standard spiritual multiplication and community development programs will begin to be done again.  However, we expect there will brokenness in parts of the macro economic systems in our country that will influence the limits of economic value we can add. 

Phase 5 : July 15-August 15 

We plan to implement a similar $35,000 Phase and are seeking funds for that phase’s combination of 3 Corona responses, hoping to increase funds for Job Restarts and decrease Nutrition for the Hungry.  We are also seeking funds for $10,000 Grief/Medical costs of leaders’ families in phases 3 through 5, and $25,000 for Leaders’ Media in phases 3 through 5.  

 

Comments

Thank you for Bright Hope World’s generosity for extra funds beyond what you planned. May God enrich you from His abundance. Your gift will be used during the Corona Response Phase starting June 15, as described above.  

Some Community Development programs that you fund from our Annual Plan & Budget will also be implemented in addition to this Corona Plan, but in a revised way. For example, one planned training for 50 on how to make a backyard pool (tarp on bamboo frame) for raising catfish to add a side income, with a gift of one pool for the host of the demonstration, will be done but with these revisions: the trainer will be a younger man instead of our 58 year old lead man, participants will be 10 or less and guard distance, we want the host to get the pool and have a protein source for his extended family.