Jonathan Bellamy spoke with Five Talents UK about their successful model of giving small business loans, rather than aid, to individuals in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania.

Jon: That's a great model. Let me ask you then, the other side of it is business capability, so, you're giving a loan, but how do you know that that person is capable to run a business. Where does training and education come in?

Five Talents UK, Kenya - Embu - Rung'ang'a - Lucy Mjoki Mwilkaria (Photo: Adam Dickens Photography)

Steve: That's really important, because the Five Talents model is not just to check savings and make loans. It's also to provide some sort of rudimentary training in running a business. That may be just in keeping accounts and working out costs and incomes, because these are very small businesses, but nevertheless it's important for people who often don't have a great deal of education, to be able to understand what they're doing.

Five Talents trains the trainers, if you like. They are people in the three countries in which we are involved. We go out and do business training, which is really well attended. I have been to one of those myself. It was a group of about 15 people, mainly ladies and there they were with the flipchart giving explanation of how to run a little business. It was wonderful.

Jon: How successful has the support of Five Talents UK been?

Steve: I've been to Kenya. I paid to go out there, to see for myself. We get bombarded with things these days, about charities and good things. I wanted to see for myself whether it worked. When I went out, I met Miriam.

Miriam was a lovely lady, she was widowed. She had a young son and she used to have a little fruit and vegetable business. She had a nice piece of cloth, which she put out on the pavement and she sold the fruit and vegetables from there, but she could only do that from 6 o'clock in the evening, because if she wanted to have her little outlet by the market hall, she was not allowed to sit on the pavement and sell vegetables whilst the market hall was open. So she came to Five Talents and said, "I would so much love to be able to have a stall in the market, so that I could sell my fruit and vegetables all day and increase my turnover." So we gave a small loan to go and buy a little stall in this large common market, in this small town in Kenya and there she was when we went to meet her. I spoke with her and she told me what a difference it made to life and her face was just beaming when we walked in to speak to her. It was wonderful.

Jon: You're not just in Kenya are you?

Five Talents UK, Kenya - Thika - Murera-Sisal - Anthony Kamau Muiri (Photo: Adam Dickens Photography)

Steve: No, we're in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. The Ugandan and Tanzanian models are slightly different, in that they are simply loans, but in Kenya we've expanded it in order to have these savings groups as well.

Jon: What's the goal in the next five years?

Steve: We'd desperately like to get from 80,000 to 100,000 people receiving loans. That would be possible because we've got the networks in these three countries, but if you take Kenya, for example, when I was there I spoke to one of the Bishops and he would just love to see this scheme rolled out in other parts of his diocese because it works. He's seen the benefit and I'm hoping to go back again at the end of this year and go to one place where a scheme is fairly mature now, but go to another area where we are hoping to set up a new scheme and do some work there on the ground. The need is great.

Jon: What drew you to be an active partner with Five Talents UK?

Steve: Although I knew a lot about aid and a little bit about micro-finance, I hadn't come across Five Talents until I was at New Wine. I saw their stall and spoke at length to them and then I went and did some research. Clearly it works, because it benefits the people so much, in a way that they aren't dependent, because they do this by the skills. They are simply being given the seed corn, if you like, to start it off.

The charity's name comes from the five talents parable in the Bible, where Jesus tells us to make the best use of what we are given. I could tell you this, people like Miriam and Sebastian who I also met, who was a cobbler, they are five talents people.

Jon: To reach those 100,000 people by 2020, what kind of support and help does Five Talents UK need and who are you looking for?

Steve: Ideally if Five Talents had more funds available, we would be able to expand the schemes in East Africa, Kenya particularly and Uganda and Tanzania. There is a small team who work on this and who are fired up for it and really knowledgeable about micro finance. We could roll it out into other areas if we had more money, because we need that in order to set up the groups in the first place, in order to be able to give the business training that we need. Also, to have a fund of money, which enables those initial loans to be made.

Jon: If anybody would like to find out more what should they do?

Steve: Simply go on the web and look at Five Talents UK. It's a good attractive website, which tells a lot about what we're doing, but also gives people knowledge on how they can support Five Talents, if they wish to.