In Kenya Sea Change has partnered with Jamii Bora Trust, which began in 1999 when several former beggars and slum dwellers asked Ingrid Munroe-then head of the African Housing Fund, to help improve their lives. She agreed, and since then, a once-small savings matching programme has grown into a nationwide microfinance institution with truly ambitious growth and impact plans.

Jamii Bora Trust’s financial products include loans for small businesses, land, housing, and education and also offer life, and health insurance, including services HIV positive clients.

Jamii Bora means ‘good families.’ Their holistic approach to poverty alleviation includes alcohol rehabilitation, orphan outreach, and street beggar transition programs.

These services result in high loan repayment repayments rates and positive changes in clients’ standards of living. Jamii Bora Trust targets the very poor living in urban and rural Kenya; their dozens of branches serve clients in virtually all-major Kenyan cities.

Jamii Bora Trust is broadening their services by developing Kaputei, a housing community where members can buy homes with mortgage payments similar to rents paid in the slums [about $20 per month].

Jamii Bora Trust is unique in that new staff are almost all previous borrowers or close relatives of borrowers. It is also unique in that approximately one-third of its loans are to men.

At the closing ceremony of the Global Microcredit Summit in Halifax, Canada in November 2006 Ingrid Munro made a presentation on the work of her institution Jamii Bora which prompted Nobel Peace prize winner Mohammad Yunus in reply to say ‘The work of Jamii Bora is revolutionising the microfinance industry.’