Reconxile
There are many good and worthy charities who are seeking to make a difference to the poor, and most of them are increasingly aware of the need for sustainability and the role of empowerment and commerce in that. But the charities that are making a real difference are typically overstretched and have more need than resources to meet it. They are excellent, worthy, faithful, and deserve every encouragement. And we do not want to compete with them in any way shape or form.
Our model is different. Most of the work that takes place through our model, we will never even hear about. The difference that we are making will be largely unknown to us. Even the needs we are meeting will pass us by. Our goal is to encourage and equip a direct channel connecting those in need with those that want to help them.
We do not want your money (we are well supported for our needs, thanks be to God), nor even your direct help (we have no real infrastructure to support volunteers). We need you: your heart; your ideas; your network; your character; your passion; your physical presence; your vision; your identity - everything that God made you to be. And we need you to put it directly on the line for Him; in fellowship; in faith; in any way you feel called.
We are not here to form a buffer between you and those you are called to help. We are not willing to take your money and provide some sense of absolution for the fact that you are gifted and materially blessed while others are not. We are here to remind you that God came down to engage with our need personally, and His teaching is about relationship and personal engagement in the body, with our brothers and sisters. And we are here to witness to the immense and suprising joy of that engagement - an experience you will probably prize and repeat for the rest of your lives.
We are different, because we are YOU.
UK
Reconxile is in the business of transformation. With your help, we guide and support people in the poorest areas of the World to discover and lay hold of their identity as workers and traders who use business, however small and simple, to pull themselves and their families out of poverty.
We provide simple training materials (free of charge) to help people get the best chance of success out of loans from Microfinance and Village Savings and Loans schemes. With your help, we teach them the basics, such as: how to attract customers; how to provide a quality product or service; how to make the money work out, and we do it step-by step through simple exercises and discussions, which require only a blackboard, paper and pens.
We have a vision to mobilise teams of ordinary, everyday people, like yourselves perhaps, to use 2-3 weeks of their time to do this work of guiding, supporting and teaching themselves - to engage in the joy of seeing people's situations transformed; to be part of something life-changing. Our website www.reconxile.org has been constructed to inspire, guide and equip you to do that. Is this a vision you could share in? Is this a vision you could help others to share in?
Reconxile is an explicitly Christian community who take 2 Corinthians 5:18 as their inspiration and seek to work out their ministry in practical ways through building reconciliation between:
• people and their dreams;
• the dispossessed and the economy;
• organisations and their potential;
in the earnest hope of enabling individuals to reclaim their identity and build steps to their reconciliation with the creator who gave it to them.
What do we mean by 'explicitly'? Our reality is that God, the creator of the universe, is alive and well, if a little bit disappointed. And that he loves each one of us, individually and personally, so much that he humiliates and sacrifices himself on a cross and still allows us free choice over whether we accept this or not. And that this knowledge is so fundamentally awesome that it should drive and underpin everything we do. And that we at Reconxile fall way short of living up to that, or even of trying to live up to that, but we persevere, and actually feel God smile on us from time to time. We are pleased to work with sincere and caring followers of all faiths and none, but see no value in concealing our identity to do so.
Our intellectual limitations as human beings sadly constrain us, at any one time, to only one version of the truth, one version of reality, which we are called to fervently pursue in sincerity and love. But we are convinced that God’s intellect is bigger than we can know or conceive, and the ideas that we see as being in conflict, need not necessarily be so. And because He paid such a huge price for free will, and because He loves us all as much as each other, then we will endeavour in all things to respect the importance of both.
What do we mean by 'community'? We welcome all who wish to support our aims and who are willing to respect the stated rules and ethos of the community to become involved in the Reconxile community at some level. Together we can achieve so much more that we can by working separately.
You can visit the Reconxile community at http://forum.reconxile.org
