Yehu Quick Facts

  • Number of Branches: 5
  • Number of Employees: 50
  • Number of Loans Given: 20,000
  • Number of Clients (Members): 14,500
  • Self-Sufficiency: 89%
  • Repayment Rates: 95%
  • Outstanding Loan Portfolio: $725,000 USD
Yehu branch building. White and red wooden building with people standing outside.

Typical borrower

  • Avg. Age: 42 years old
  • Years of Schooling: 3.7
  • Gender: 80% Female
  • Literacy: 54%
  • Income: 97% make under $2 per day; 83% make under $1 per day
  • Electricity in Home: 1.5%
  • Access to Clean Water: 3.6%
  • Pit Latrine: 80%
  • Children enrolled in Elementary School: 95%
  • Children enrolled in Middle School: 25%
  • 9% support more than 6 dependents with their income
  • 11% support a terminally-ill dependent
  • 21.5% have dealt with a recent death in the household
Kenyan woman with small child strapped to her back.

Yehu Microfinance

Three Kenyan Women

Yehu Microfinance models itself after the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh. We use a group-based lending methodology and work exclusively in rural Kenya. Yehu offers savings and a variety of loan products to its rural poor clients. Community Credit Workers travel by foot, bicycle or motorbike to meet weekly with clients (80% women) out in the remote villages where our members live.

Yehu truly takes financial services to the poorest of the poor who do not have any access to financial services. Our typical client (link to typical borrower profile) makes under $1 per day, lives without electricity or running water and has less than four years of formal education and is illiterate. Almost all our clients are subsistence farmers who depend upon the rainfall to live—when it rains, they survive, when there is drought, they starve. Yehu is not affiliated with any particular denomination.

Management

Adet Kachi – CEO

Adet Kachi

Adet Kachi is the CEO of Kenya and is himself a Kenyan native. Adet came to Yehu after serving as the acting general manager of the Women’s Finance House Botswana, a rural microfinance institution for two years. He has an MBA from De Montfort University (UK), is a CPA, and has a B.Sc. Agriculture (Range Management) from the University of Nairobi.

Dr. Rita Lugogo – Director

Dr. Rita de Nicolo Lugogo is a director of Yehu in Kenya. She was born in Italy and educated in the United States. After earning a degree in Biology from the University of Connecticut, she joined the Peace Corp as a teacher in Kenya where she met her husband, Juma Lugogo. Rita and Juma raised their three children in Kenya. Rita's continued educational pursuits earned her a PhD from Virginia Tech in Human Nutrition and Foods. In 1993, Rita became Choice Humanitarian's full-time Director in Kenya, a position which she fulfills in addition to her oversight responsibilities at Yehu.

Louis Pope – Founder & Chairman of the Board

Louis Pope

Louis Pope is the founder of Yehu Microfinance and serves as Chairman of the Board of Directors for Yehu. Louis Pope was born and raised in Provo, Utah.  He received a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering and an MBA from Brigham Young University.  He formed US Synthetic in April 1978 and has served as the company’s president and CEO since 1992.   US Synthetic is one of the world’s leading suppliers of polycrystalline diamond cutters to the oil industry, providing service for thirty-five international companies in over eighteen countries.  Because of Louis’s success in business he was nominated as Ernst & Young’s Utah Entrepreneur of the Year in 1998.  Louis is very active in civic and church affairs.  He is a true social entrepreneur and his passion is creating organizations to provide income to the poor in developing countries. He contributes much of his time and effort to aid foundations involved in the elimination of extreme poverty.  He sits on the boards of CHOICE Humanitarian, Yehu Microfinance in Kenya (which he founded in 1999), and Deseret International. He and his wife Christine consider their five married children and eighteen grandchildren as their greatest achievement.

Troy Holmberg – Executive Director

Troy Holmberg

Troy Holmberg is the executive director of Yehu Microfinance. Troy graduated with distinction from the Johnson School of Management at Cornell University with a Masters of Business Administration focused on international entrepreneurship.  He has lived abroad in both Southern Mexico and Switzerland.

His corporate experience includes finance and marketing in industries as diverse as financial services, diamond drill-bit manufacturing for the oil industry, and the health and wellness industry.  He has also co-authored curriculum to teach entrepreneurship and business skills to microentrepreneurs.  He also co-founded and manages Coast Coconut Farms, a social enterprise in Kenya producing organic, virgin coconut oil to provide sustainable livelihoods for rural families. He and his wife Lisa Pope Holmberg reside in Provo, Utah with their four children.

Board of Directors

Dr. Rita Lugogo

Juma Mwachihi

Faith Mbaika Vanani

Marion Nyakinywa

Samuel Maneno

Adet N. Kachi

John Masha

Advisory Board