Briefcase in hand, Riverbank credit officer Jared Adhiambo walks over sewage streams and railroad tracks, down disorienting alleyways between mud houses, into a swarm of food and clothing stalls that carries on beyond view. I try to keep up.

He stops us at the particular business we came to see at Toi Market in Kibera, a neighborhood of Nairobi, Kenya and Africa’s largest slum. After chatting with shop owners and checking up on business, he collects the daily interest payment on their loan of 2000 Kenyan Shillings (30 U.S. dollars), and we emerge back into the crowd.

Back in the main office, Head of Operations Christine Awour breaks from the normal stream of client phone calls to scratch down an idea for a new type of loan. At the top of the note she underlines “Motorbike Loan,” the product that she says will support the growing number of members who come to Riverbank for the financing of a pik-piki (Swahili for motorbike).

The new clients, who breathlessly share all of their businesses plans with me, have a clear and almost palpable potential to capitalize on their own transport enterprises and establish a working way out of poverty. But with little savings to make a down payment on the business, they must find alternative financial means. Riverbank lends not only the necessary funds, but also the encouragement and knowledge necessary for them to achieve their aspirations.

From the moment I entered the standing-room-only office to start my summer internship, I knew the wheels of Riverbank Savings and Credit SACCO are always spinning. What pushes the pedals of their operations is need.

Whether it is making daily journeys to receive payments from clients in the slums of Dandora, Muthurwa or Kibera, or responding to the quickly changing markets and business needs of the customer, Riverbank stops at almost nothing to give its clients the financial services usually expected only by the wealthy. Clients recognize the results.

Since its founding just six years ago, it has grown from a self-help group supporting seven businesswomen in Njiru quarry to a registered Savings and Credit Co-Operative defending the business ambitions of over 5,200 members.

The story of one of these clients, Ms. Jenipher Apondi, illustrates the spirit of Riverbank. With the forethought of a financial institution and humanity of a friend, they treat their clients by their business potential and the sincerity of their character, rather than by the things they could use as their collateral.

From under a tree in Gikomba market, Jenipher manages a small, tin-roofed jua kali business. As she recounts to me in Swahili, her business venture was suffering before she set out to take advantage of Riverbank’s offers. When officers at Riverbank first assessed her business, the only visible securities were leftover scrap metals from airplanes and cars, worn down hammers, heaps of mismatched nuts and bolts and some buckets of blue paint.

Nonetheless, a promise more overwhelming than these uncertainties came from her insistence that she could turn what was essentially trash into freshly manufactured wheelbarrows, metal storage boxes, pots, pans and jikos (small stoves). Now, after 28,000 Kenyan Shillings (370 U.S. sollars) of fully repaid loans, she stands next to a business with products proudly stacked taller than her, spilling out from the shop’s shaky wooden frame and onto the neighboring dirt walkway. The business sufficiently convinces me of the success Riverbank achieves by investing unsecured faithfulness in a person, like Jenipher, despite a venture that I might have assumed was impossible.

Even with government attempts to regulate the microfinance sector, many institutions still offer impractically high interest rates; the bank Jennifer used before Riverbank was one of them. But after almost a year in Riverbank’s hands, she now professes, “They are the only microfinance that could support me. My business wouldn’t survive without them.”

Because the goal of Riverbank is to empower client’s lives, not just their businesses, I found out Jenipher’s jua kali enterprise was not the only object of the organization’s attention. Riverbank offers micro health insurance to clients to offset one of the most prevalent causes of defaults: unforeseen medical expenses. The unfortunate truth their clients face is that injuries and illness are not only rife within their communities, but also have the power to devastate their cash flow and businesses. Comprehensive medical cover, which is otherwise an unfamiliar luxury to the very poor, is available at an affordable 10 to 14 cents per day, and financing is even available for those who cannot support this cost.

When her son fell sick and had to go to the hospital, the medical bills were covered by the insurance, which she was required to purchase to withdraw a loan over 10,000 Kenyan Shillings. And because the insurance allowed her to maintain her business, later on she was able to hire four additional employees. Without Riverbank’s innovative techniques to unknot the tie between poverty and tragedy, her son could have become one more casualty of unaffordable medicine and her employees could still be invisible among the millions of Kenyans scavenging for jobs that simply do not exist.

Another reassured Riverbank client, Catherine Maina, represents how even the smallest of loans can bring about remarkable impact. Out of a mud-walled house with one lightbulb hanging from the ceiling and several portraits of her children hanging on the walls, she served me a more than super sized plate of French fries, which she makes and sells full-time to fellow Kibera residents. Her one room home has only a bed, sofa, and table squeezed together on top of the fractured concrete floor. The loan officer of any large bank accustomed to giving loans of 100,000 Kenyan Shillings and above would probably not be impressed. Besides pitiable collateral, there is hardly enough light for a big-time banker to read off brochures of products Kibera residents could never afford and would not necessarily benefit from. Riverbank recognizes and maximizes the business potential of this overlooked segment of the banking industry. With a seemingly inconsequential loan of 2000 Kenyan Shillings (30 US Dollars), Catherine was able to buy more potatoes, work more hours, sell more of her product and make better profits for herself and her family.

The traffic in and out of the Riverbank office is as astounding as that of a Nairobi Friday evening. Clients of every background fill the office to make payments, register accounts for family and friends, and discuss the next loan they will take to attain their next business aspiration. There are no tall counters for customers to stand behind or teller windows for them to speak through, only a small round table in the back corner that doubles as the employee lunch room. Credit officers sit next to, not across from, clients as they determine how to help them overcome their desperate but never hopeless financial circumstances. It is also the place where I witnessed Riverbank keep its biggest promise: “using creativity to unlock human potential.”

*If you would like to learn more about Riverbank or about how to contribute to the organization, please contact them at info@riverbankcredit.com.