Events Detail

Hudson Institute's

Center for Religious Freedom

and

Center for Global Prosperity

held a discussion on…

Microfinance in South Sudan

November 18
3:30 – 4:30PM

           Rev. Thomas Anei

Twenty years of war devastated South Sudan and shattered its economic infrastructure. While Sudan's oil is found mostly in southern fields, oil revenues have not yet led to development or jobs in South Sudan. A referendum on secession, scheduled for 2011 under the Comprehensive Peace Agreement that ended the war, lends urgency to the need to find solutions to South Sudan's continuing state of humanitarian crisis. To shed light on one hopeful model, The Rev. Thomas Anei discussed his success in establishing microfinance in the southern village of Lietnhom. Working with Five Talents International, a Christian nonprofit organization specializing in microfinance, and Sudan's Episcopal Church, Rev. Anei helped set up South Sudan's first community-owned village bank and provides training for local residents to start and manage small businesses. The bank was unharmed by conflict that broke out between local clans in spring 2008, and helped residents to rebuild in the aftermath. It now claims over 500 members.

Rev. Thomas Anei is a priest in the Episcopal Church of Sudan and a program officer with Five Talents in Lietnhom. Born in Aweil, Sudan in 1980, he was one of the "Lost Boys" who fled from Sudan to Ethiopia during the north-south civil war, and joined the SPLA as a child soldier. During the 1990s, he lived in the Kakuma Refugee Camp. After undertaking religious training in Kenya, he was ordained a deacon in 2001 and a priest in 2006.

The Institute on Religion and Democracy, a co-sponsor of this event, helped launch Five Talents International in 1998.

For more information, please email Beth Kerley at bkerley@hudson.org

Betsy and Walter Stern Conference Center

Hudson Institute

1015 15th Street, NW

Sixth Floor

Washington, DC 20005