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.’

In September 2007 Paul Mitchell and other directors made the first of many visits to the slums of Nairobi to see the revolutionary work of Jamii Bora led by Ingrid Munro and her team of former street beggars.

They also experienced first hand the phenomenal successes in reaching and empowering the destitute, the former criminals and substance abusers.

Having spent much of their time in the slums of Nairobi and seeing the amazing work that Jami Bora do, in many areas but in particular with the street beggar transition program, Sea Change agreed to support this project by donating $10,000 to help expand the programme.

Since then we have donated €140,000 to help with branch expansion and other projects in Northern Kenya so that thousands more can benefit from Microcredit that gives their members independence and dignity on their journey out of extreme  poverty.

We are now in further discussions to see how we can best support Jami Bora and the their 5 year plan, with one of their objectives to increase the number of members from 160,000 to 1 million by 2011, through a extensive branch expansion programme and ancillary services.