What’s your five and two?
“There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish, but what are they for so many?” -John 6:9
Our mission is activating leadership
to transform communities from the inside-out.
We are a network of community builders and activists who are passionate about thriving, healthy communities. Working in a variety of countries and cultures, our leaders are focused on working with the most vulnerable populations.
Because we begin with the vision and assets of the local people, our work takes on many forms – from health care and agriculture, to social justice, fair trade and entrepreneurship.
The common thread across our network is a shared belief that sustainable developmental outcomes are best achieved when the vision, knowledge, skills and resources come from the community itself. Community Development from the “inside-out”.
Meet our resource team.
Jamie Munday
Executive Director
Jamie is a graduate of Regent College (MA Theology) and the University of Wales where he completed his Masters in Social Development Policy and Management. He has lived and worked around the World serving in various development capacities. His passion is to see the poor move from passive beneficiaries to active agents of change in their own lives and communities. He and his wife Leah live in North Vancouver with their three children.
Dr. Murray Nickel
Board Chairperson
Now living in Abbotsford, BC, Murray grew up in the D.R Congo where he continues to work amongst the extreme poor. When he’s not on-call at the Abbotsford Hospital, he spends a lot of time visiting poor communities around the World researching best practices in Development theory. He has written a number of articles and books including “Rhythms of Poverty” documenting his experiences in Development. Murray is married to Faith, and has three children.
Daniella Fast
Director of Collaborative Learning & Practice
Daniella graduated from the University of British Columbia with a degree in Education. Over the years she split her time between caring for her children and teaching. After having traveled to Eastern Africa, she grew passionate about development and supporting strategies that empower people in vulnerable life situations. Now, in her role at Five & Two Network, Daniella oversees the development and mobilization of learning content for the network. She is passionate about resourcing Five & Two leaders on their developmental journey in the context where they find themselves as well as connecting like-minded practitioners around the globe. Daniella and her husband Paul live in Vancouver with their three boys, Nathaniel, Jonah and Elias and love road-tripping adventures!
Saji Oommen
Director for Global Engagement
Saji's roots come from Kerala, India and he was born in Dallas, grew up in California and attended college at Biola University. He moved to Philadelphia to do his MBA at Eastern University. He then worked in inner-city Philly for three years, during which time, he met his wife Bindu. They relocated to California in 1997 to work with Southeast Asian refugees. They were called to New Delhi, India with MB Mission (now Multiply) in 2005 where they worked with street kids and church planting. In 2010, Multiply invited them to Turkey where they worked with Syrian refugees and started Building Leaders 4 Peace (bl4p.com). Saji then worked as the executive director of Kidstown International where he worked with orphans and vulnerable children in India, Nepal and Romania. He now serves as the Director for Global Engagement with Five & Two Network. He is living in Lynden, WA with Bindu and they have four wonderful children Isaiah, Karis, Alexander, and JZ, and a crazy golden retriever named Cleo.
Kendra DeMicco-Lovins
Network Catalyst
Kendra is passionate about peacemaking & reconciliation, and has spent the last 8 years working in this field in the Middle East, South America, and North America. Her work focused on facilitating Peace Camps and coming alongside young leaders to support, equip, and build capacity to make holistic change in their local communities. She has her Master's degree in Secondary Education from the University of Delaware, and an undergraduate degree in Literature and Theatre form Eastern University. She is delighted to join the Five & Two team to work in the convergent space between Peacemaking and Reconciliation and Community Centered Development. She lives in the mountains of Colorado with her husband and two children.
Chase Lovins
Program Director
Chase Lovins serves as the Program Director for Five & Two Network. A budding practitioner of CCD, Chase has his undergraduate degree in Psychology and background in organizational servant leadership. In his role for Five & Two, Chase combines his love of people and knack for details by working alongside communities to consider the resources available through Five & Two’s assets, but also the vast and varied assets of the Five & Two international community itself. As he continues to support these communities, Chase’s focus remains in learning, listening, and growing as a student of community driven development in the varied contexts of the global community. Chase is married to Kendra, has two children, and lives and plays in the mountains of Northwest Colorado.
Julie Hurtado Rocha
Finance Manager
Currently living in Chilliwack B.C, Julie grew up in D.R Congo - an experience that serves her well in this cross-cultural role. She holds a BA from the University of British Columbia and an MA in Leadership for Non-Profits and Business from Trinity Western University. Her thesis project focused on Asset-Based Community Development as best practice for sustainable community-driven development. Her wealth of experience in executive, human resources, finance, and administration has made Julie an indispensable member of the team. Along with her role at 5 & 2 Julie works as a Director at Chilliwack Community Services. She is married to Angel Hurtado Rocha and has one child named Thiago!
“If you want to build a ship, don't drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.”
— Antoine de Saint-Exupery
How Five & Two Network came to be…
Dr. Murray Nickel grew up in D.R. Congo, so it wasn’t a huge surprise that he ended up back there later in life. With his family in tow, he returned to Congo in 1999 to practice medicine, train local physicians, and somehow make a difference in his adopted home. After visiting the local clinic it occurred to him what a drop in the bucket his service would provide. Was it worth coming all the way to Congo with his western training to set up practice in a small clinic? He saw that practicing medicine in Kinshasa would undermine local Congolese physicians.
Fortunately, that’s not where the story ends. Murray began to move around the countryside visiting and encouraging friends and Church members who had their own community development initiatives. It was during this time he began to realize that poor people had the ideas and agency to create their own change. During this 6-year period, seeds were planted that have now grown into successful, locally-initiated community associations and institutions in a variety of sectors. More importantly for us, the seeds of a radical new approach to development were germinating within Murray.
After completing a Masters in Social Development Policy and Management in 2008, Jamie Munday took on a role with MB Mission overseeing development projects globally, including those initiatives Murray had helped to grow in the Congo. Over the next 7 years they worked closely together always learning and adapting their approach. Around that time, more and more development practitioners were recognizing the dangers of external aid and the ways that “helping” could actually do “harm” to the poor. Being all too familiar with this reality in their work, Murray and Jamie had begun experimenting with “endogenous” strategies – in other words, development from the “inside-out”.
By 2012 they began to use the language of ABCD, or “Asset-Based Community-Driven Development” – not as a strategy or program, but as a term to describe the kind of values they were practicing. At that time a number of Congolese leaders were walking with them in learning and applying these values. Instead of teaching this new approach to these leaders, they were invited to learn, test, and iterate the process together. By giving them ownership and agency in the process, Murray and Jamie had the beginnings of a flat network of partners, instead of the disempowering top-down relationship so often associated with western sponsored development programs.
By 2014, four key Congolese partners had begun using the ABCD approach in their own development work. Most significantly, a local organization was established to oversee the training and oversight of ABCD network members in Congo. This fledgling organization (now called CRAID) provides training, coaching and oversight to many community leaders across Congo as well as other organizations in Africa.
In 2015, with ABCD Congo established as a project under MB Mission, Jamie continued his work in Thailand where he was able to experiment and further apply some of this learning. With the beginning of new partnerships formed in Thailand, Philippines and Laos, Jamie returned home in 2017 to begin Five & Two Network along with Murray.