Moving Forward in Faith: Partnership in Trinidad & Tobago

When COVID-19 surfaced in Trinidad & Tobago, it could not have come at a worse time. The country’s economy was gradually emerging from an economic recession caused mainly by decreased energy earnings. The small business sector was similarly impacted. 

With the announcement of the lockdown at the tail end of March 2020, many of our SMEs were hit hard--especially those in the services sector who had close contact with their customers. Several others required urgent response strategies to keep their businesses going. Some immediately went under, and morale was extremely low. 

Faced with this scenario, the Network of Christians in Business faced its greatest challenge thus far in equipping its members to thrive spiritually and economically in the marketplace. 

Like every other SME support organization around the world, the immediate need of the NCB was to support its SMEs to pivot and survive the pandemic crisis. However, the magnitude of the crisis required far more than the NCB’s capacity could accommodate. Our Business Affiliate team immediately came in to fill this capacity. They delivered several training sessions including “Re-Envisioning Your Business”, “Cash Flow Scenario-Planning”, “Social Media Marketing”, and “Recurring Revenue Models.” 

This approach proved to be successful!  

As a result of the sessions, many members were able to successfully implement strategic planning, pivot their business, design additional revenue models, manage their cash flows and adopt social media strategies. Regional Director Jose Elvir’s session titled “God’s Thoughts on Business During the Crisis”, proved uplifting, resulting in lifting the entrepreneurs’ sagging morale and motivating them to keep focused. 

The need for the interventions was so great that the NCB recorded the highest number of participants at a session at these particular sessions. 

The NCB was kept on its toes with the one-on-one mentoring sessions requested by members after each session as they applied the learnings from the sessions. This turned out to be the most amount of mentoring done in a single year by the NCB since inception. 

The BA team coming to walk alongside the NCB enabled them to keep providing needs-based support for its membership without missing a beat at a time when it would have been otherwise impossible to do so. Members openly expressed their appreciation of being part of such a network that was backed by such committed faith-filled partners.