"Business is the greatest hope for the world's poor," says Doug Seebeck, executive director of Partners Worldwide. I am sitting with Seebeck during lunch at the organization's October 9 summit in Grand Rapids, Michigan. I've come here to learn more about the microloan process, a growing phenomenon that offers great promise in fighting global poverty. Through microloans, responsible entrepreneurs can pull themselves and their families out of poverty, and they are doing it on their own steam. Seebeck explains how Partners Worldwide puts freedom into the hands of poor people by allowing them to run their own businesses. "If people aren't free economically, they're not free," he says.

Partners Worldwide is a Grand Rapids-based non-profit which helps entrepreneurs around the world by connecting them with local Christian organizations and North American collaborators for mentoring, skills development, and business know-how. Through "on the ground" organizations in the countries served, microloans are available for qualified individuals to start or improve businesses. By establishing face-to-face connections, Partners Worldwide staff and their in-country colleagues can help determine promising loans, keep revolving loan funds well regulated, and encourage locals to make healthy risks to pull themselves out of poverty.

Seebeck explains how North American businesspeople have often felt they are at the bottom of a church "ladder" which places preachers and traditional missionaries at the top and entrepreneurial types at the bottom. The approach of Partners Worldwide is to affirm and use the talents businesspeople have as tools for a type of missions work whose time has come. One of the keywords of the summit was Business As Mission, or BAM, which is an avenue for anyone with some kind of working skill to serve Christ. Partners Worldwide is looking for people who thought the church couldn't use them. Somewhere, an entrepreneur is waiting to pull him or herself out of poverty using skills you can teach. "We don't have to leave our role in business to go into ministry," said Greg Elzinga, Partners Worldwide marketing director, in an opening session.

Seebeck and Elzinga would also like you to consider what happens when money is thrown toward a problem through governments or typical relief NGOs. Often the problem of poverty outlives the good that the money can do. Or worse, the money ends up in the hands of those who don't need it but have more power than those who do. The microloan-entrepreneur process puts the means of earning in the hands of those who need it. Real examples were shared during sessions at the summit. A man named Gonzalo ran a struggling bakery business with his wife in Ecuador. They received a loan for baking equipment which turned their business around, and their marriage and spiritual lives flourished as a result. John and Joyce, another husband-wife team in Uganda, received a loan to start an agricultural storage business to help spread out the benefits of the yearly harvest. This is a new and important business in a country where lack of storage has meant much of the plentiful harvest typically spoils before it can be consumed.

In Haiti, a woman named Madame Lefevre ran a company making popsicles but needed a new compressor for her freezing equipment. Partners Worldwide helped her get two new compressors, and her business is booming. In all three cases, and myriad others around the world, these entrepreneurs have turned around and helped others in their communities to pick themselves up and make a living on their own terms. Further success stories can be read in My Business, My Mission, a book Seebeck co-wrote with Timothy Stoner.

Gayle Zonnefeld, regional representative for the western US and Canada, pointed attendees toward the book of Acts, reminding us that the early church grew not in the houses of worship but in the marketplace. Ministry was done "where life was lived." And so it is possible that, through business strengthening community connections, ministry is done around the world today.

What Partnerships Do

Elzinga introduced summit attendees to the components of the work of Partners Worldwide:

1. A partnership is the relationship between a North American affiliate and an international affiliate located in the country that the partnership is serving.

2. Both affiliates aid local entrepreneurs by training, mentoring, and equipping them. Solid business skills and knowledge of the country are key to determining good practices in loans and training.

3. The partnership gives entrepreneurs access to capital, but it does not lead with money. Non-monetary needs are considered carefully. Some partnerships may place prerequisites on borrowers, such as saving for six months in order to prove responsibility.

4. Affiliates and the people connected to them act as advocates for the partnership and people served. Advocacy includes prayer, recruiting support from knowledgeable partners, and putting important matters in front of governments through letter writing or other means.

According to Elzinga's presentation, currently 32 North American affiliates partner with 40 international affiliates which have helped to start or grow 6,000 businesses and 7,700 agricultural organizations. In the 2007-2008 lending year, 1,656 jobs were created and 16,812 jobs were sustained.

The partnerships are not just about jobs and money. They are about long-term guidance and the shared joy of increasing dignity and self-sufficiency. Francis Ssenyonjo is a partnership manager in Uganda. As a local, he is fulfilling a Partners Worldwide vision of development being in the hands of people who know the country best. When I asked Ssenyonjo why he is involved in the partnership concept, he said that business is more sustainable than other forms of relief. He sees a fear of taking risks as one hurdle in the way of development in his country. In his work, he interacts with in-country businesspeople, sometimes encouraging them to take risks which can help improve their livelihoods. "Every single person created by God has potential," he says. Taking on a challenge through your own initiative is one way to build on that potential.

What Can I Do?

Rob Tribken, a speaker at the summit, is the founder and president of a successful packaged salad company in California. He felt a calling to use his skills with Partners Worldwide in 2006 after attending a Partners-sponsored conference in 2003. He is now the head of the Uganda partnership and uses his decades of experience to get small Ugandan businesses running successfully, with a particular emphasis on food processing.

As a 20-something American trying to figure out my calling, can I contribute in the ways that Tribken has? I have yet to develop any serious business skills, and survival generally conjures budgeting for toilet paper and gas fill-ups more than guiding entrepreneurs in countries across the ocean. Between sessions at the summit, I chatted with Kyle Stob, a 25-year-old Zambia-based partnership manager who received his two-year assignment after interning in that country. "Don't get caught up in the rat race of America. God has a lot in store for you," he says. "You don't have to be 'established' to start doing things."

An attractive thing about partnering in this model is that you are encouraged to build up marketable skills and talents in order to help others. As a missionary kid who knows a lot of missionary families, I've witnessed how growing up in the "pure" ministry arena can leave one with few skills that hirers are looking for once the mission term is over. In the business partnership model, the ministry happens through real relationships, and skills grow along with the partnership. If I spend years becoming reasonably successful, even if it's in career-oriented pursuits, that is still training for ministry. Whether entering Business As Mission in the mid or late stages of a career, like Tribken, or starting a career in the BAM setting, like Stob, personal development is not in opposition to advancing Christ's kingdom.

Roxanne de Graaf, Partners Worldwide's director of strategic initiatives, explains how people in countries around the world are excited about the partnership model because it connects Christianity and business. The exploitative image of Western business that has haunted developing countries for decades is not the end of the story. Business in the hands of people, with the gift of knowledge from Western businesspeople, is good not just for poverty reduction but international relations. Volunteers who can afford to travel to developing countries can offer their skills and form relationships with people they are helping. The ubiquity of tools like e-mail and Skype also means that those who have skills but are unable to travel can still take part in partnerships.

Anyone who is interested can learn more about Partners Worldwide and the microloan industry through the Partners website and by reading My Business, My Mission. It's worth it to find out how the work you are already doing can be a continuation of the church's work over all these centuries. As Seebeck put it in his opening remarks, "The economically crippled can now rise up and walk."

Bennett Poosawtsee grew up in Thailand and currently resides in Grand Rapids, MI. He attended Calvin College and currently works for Hope Network, a nonprofit Christian healthcare organization.