Several years ago at The Gathering conference we began to focus on young leaders of growing ministries. Over time this has become one of the most popular classes at the conference as everyone looks to this session as an encouragement, a challenge and a glimpse inside the work God is doing in a generation of globally connected and imaginative young men and women. We have hosted George Srour, the young man who as a college senior founded Building Tomorrow, a ministry building schools for orphans in Uganda. Jason Russell, one of three young film makers, who flew to Uganda to document the plight of young soldiers and created the movement called Invisible Children; Blake Mycoskie, an entrepreneur who designed a shoe company – TOMS Shoes – that sells high end shoes to young consumers and gives away hundreds of thousands of shoes to the poor around the world; Justin Dillon, a musician who produced the feature film Call+Response to help focus a new generation on the movement to stop human trafficking. We did not want to feature start-ups but ministries that had some substance and accomplishment. We wanted to showcase younger ministry leaders building strong organizations with a unique mission, performance and the likelihood of long term success. We wanted them to be not only young and energetic but focused, bright, disciplined and mature beyond their years. But it took an original illustration of young leadership to set the pattern and the standard for this and on the original panel we had the good fortune of having Peter Greer – a young man who had been recommended to us by a friend. I knew a little about microfinance at the time but very little about HOPE. My friend had been a graduate student with Peter at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and spoke so highly of this young man who had worked in microfinance as the managing director of URWEGO Community Banking in Rwanda for three years, been a technical advisor for a foundation in Zimbabwe and worked as a microfinance advisor in Cambodia. He was so right to recommend him to me. We could not have had a more perfect original example of young leadership. In the years since then, I have travelled with Peter and found him to possess a graciousness and confidence that enables him to attract and lead an organization with talented and dedicated staff, enthusiastic board members and informed donors. He has a deep knowledge of the field that makes him trusted among his peers. However, it is his innate and among leaders a rare ability to share credit, to partner and often to deflect visibility from himself that has marked his uniqueness and that of HOPE International for me. In spite of an intense belief in the work of HOPE, a vision for the long term growth of the work and a commitment to building a ministry that combines physical and spiritual ministry through the tool of microfinance, I have had the privilege to see a young man put others forward, build the work, reputation and support of other ministries and share resources and opportunities in ways that are creative and build the whole community of microfinance ministries. My friendship with Peter is a gift of God in my whole family’s life and I hope you’ll take advantage of this opportunity to be with him and the ministry of HOPE International.