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Mary Wilson*, a missionary in Southeast Asia, has a vision to help poor people in neighboring poor countries by teaching them skills for an income-generating cottage industry. “I thought that making dolls might be one way to help them earn money to survive,” she said.

Her problem: doll making is something she knows little about.

That’s where Global Economic Outreach (GEO) can help. GEO, a Web network of experts on subjects as varied as concrete construction and cross-stitching, exists to link these experts with missionaries on the field who can draw on their skills to solve problems. Rick Shafer, who founded the Wilmington, N.C.-based ministry three years ago, says that Western church pews are filled with folks who know about things—crocheting or gardening tomatoes, for instance—they may think are significant but could actually be key to a Christian worker on the field.

Here’s how it works: Anybody in the know about anything—from cows to comedy; from bee keeping to baking, from spinning to sanitation—signs up on GEO’s Web site, , to be listed in the database. Missionaries and ministries, in turn, access the sites and browse GEO’s database and forums for contacts on subjects they need. There’s no charge for the service.

No skill is too small. “Most people think that what they do is uninteresting and insignificant,” Shafer said. But with a seemingly small skill, like how to make rag dolls, a missionary can “build a bridge for sharing the gospel. We can come alongside missionaries building bridges among people they are ministering to.”

Information that missionaries glean from forums and database contacts may help them solve their own problems, such as finding good books for home schooling a ten-year-old, or may help a missionary reach out to those in the host country, such as helping a poor village set up a spice garden in Asia.

Shafer said the better part of requests deal with community development projects, many of which have to do with agriculture. One such project involved a missionary seeking technical advice on how to find underground drinking water. He found just the right expert through GEO’s Web site, which set the missionary in the right direction to solve the problem. “They’ve communicated back and forth about soils and things to look for in the geology and certain types of rock,” Shafer said.

Wilson found just the person to help with her doll-making project through GEO. “I have been very impressed with the attitude of the doll maker and her desire to be of help,” Wilson said. “I am pleased with the way GEO handled my request. I would certainly recommend [GEO] to others.”

Another missionary starting a Christian school in the Philippines needed advice about textbooks. Through GEO, the missionary found home schoolers and Christian teachers to offer advice. For the person offering the advice, “It doesn’t take much time, but it really pays off [for the missionary] on the other end where it’s difficult to track that stuff down,” Shafer said.

So far, about four hundred people are in GEO’s network, which has tackled dozens of questions.

Before launching GEO, Rick Shafer worked fourteen years in the plastics industry. He and his wife Elizabeth served four years with Youth With A Mission (YWAM) in Mongolia. That’s where he began his own network of experts to help their own outreach. “We wanted to help Mongolians start businesses, generate income and, through relationships, model faith and share the gospel,” Shafer said. To do this, he saw he needed a big Rolodex of contacts concerning a limitless range of subjects. For instance, he said, “If I needed somebody who knew the furniture business, I could call somebody and ask, ‘This is the situation—what can we do?’’

And that marked the beginning of his vision to take the same approach “not just to support our ministry overseas, but make it available to more people,” Shafer said. With the Internet linking just about everybody around the world, it’s easy for folks to give and get the advice that can make a huge difference to those on the field sharing the gospel and meeting people’s needs.

About four hundred volunteers are in his database so far. “Our volunteer community ranges from farmers and people just skilled in arts and crafts to physicians and veterinarians,” he said. To help with the workload, he’s got two full-time staffers so far and another plans to start soon.

As for Wilson’s nascent venture, hurdles remain in cutting through the host country’s bureaucracy and learning how to market the dolls. “Only God knows how this idea will develop,” she said. “But I’m willing to do what I can to try to help.” *name changed for security reasons

August 9, 2002