Grantee Spotlight: Victoria Inter-Diocesan Investment Company (VIDIC)
The Victoria Inter-Diocesan Investment Company (VIDIC) is a regional investment company comprising five Anglican dioceses in and around Kenya’s third-largest city of Kisumu, located on the shores of Lake Victoria. VIDIC owns and operates four properties for the financial benefit of the dioceses. Alpha House is VIDIC’s flagship property investment, a five-story, 42,000 square-foot office building in Kisumu’s central business district. Alpha House was built in 1982 with three floors, and VIDIC secured commercial bank loans in 2014 and 2017 to add two new floors and refurbish the original floors. In the three years prior to taking on the commercial bank loan, VIDIC had distributed 25% of annual net profits to the participating dioceses, averaging $4,000 per diocese in annual support for operational and ministry expenses. Before the loan restructuring, debt service was consuming all available cash flow, leaving no funds for ministry payments to the dioceses.
Trinity worked with VIDIC and Church Commissioners for Kenya (CCK) to pay off the $400,000 balance of a commercial loan and to extend the term of the remaining CCK loan from five years to ten years. These adjustments have significantly reduced Alpha House’s monthly debt service by 46%. The new loan structure will result in financial benefits to the diocese that will extend throughout the CCK ten-year loan term.
Alpha House’s reduced debt service has enabled VIDIC to resume its financial support to the five participating dioceses at double its pre-loan levels. In 2021, each diocese received approximately $9,000 to support ongoing ministries for an estimated 220,000 Anglicans in the face of increased need and decreased giving because of the COVID-19 pandemic. For example, these funds have helped the Diocese of Bondo support a full-time Priest for Outreach Ministry in Unreached Islands. This person ministers in a very remote area predominantly inhabited by fishermen with a nomadic lifestyle.