Five Talents UK provides savings schemes, small loans, and business training for entrepreneurs in rural Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda. The organisation enables those who have no access to financial services to set up and grow the small, often vulnerable, businesses they depend on.

In its simplest form, microfinance involves giving an entrepreneur  a small loan who  will repay it over time. The repaid loan can then be recycled and used over again.

Of course, providing rural entrepreneurs with savings and loans is not enough. Giving communities the infrastructure to pool their resources is a start, but in the short-term, distributing loan capital without business training can result in increased consumerism. In the long-term, the debts incurred from loans that aren't combined with education can actually hamper economic growth. And that's why each of Five Talents' programmes are built around a core of financial literacy and business training.

Over the course of the loan repayment, Field Officers visit the entrepreneurs to monitor and provide business mentoring, encouragement and ongoing training.

http://www.fivetalents.org.uk/