The UK will become a nation of sporks.

The Grameen Foundation, originating in the slums of Bangladesh, provides microloans, and more importantly, the infrastructure to help their borrowers to become financially independent. In many cases, this can be as simple as a few farm animals or providing a day's worth of raw materials, such as wicker for baskets. These workers often get gouged for these raw materials, and would otherwise have only pennies left over at the end of the day.

Many of these loans are provided to the woman of the house (often a cultural challenge), as they are more likely to make prudent decisions regarding the family's finances, such as making sure that there's enough food or fuel to look after the family.

The program has earned its founder a Nobel Prize, and it has been expanded throughout the world.

The branches use open source software, developed and managed as "Mifos." They have other opportunities here and a sourceforge project:

"Mifos is an MIS purpose-built for the microfinance industry. It provides MFIs the key functionality to better serve the poor: client management, loans & savings portfolio tracking, reporting, & social performance measurement. See mifos.org for more info."