Description: Trickle Up seeks to alleviate poverty by providing start-up money, business training and support services to the world's poorest people to help them start small family businesses.

Mission: Although numerous aid organizations work to alleviate poverty, Trickle Up is unique in targeting individuals who have the motivation to start their own businesses but who are unable to access even a microloan for initial start-up costs. Trickle Up's mission is to help the lowest income people worldwide take the first steps out of poverty by providing conditional seed capital, business training and relevant support services essential to the launch or expansion of a microenterprise. Created in 1979, Trickle Up has started or expanded more than 145,000 small family businesses and helped more than a half-million people who previously survived on less than one dollar a day. The grants and business training, and an emphasis on encouraging group savings, are powerful tools to boost family income and self-esteem. The economic self-improvement that Trickle Up entrepreneurs achieve translates into better nutrition, health care and housing for their families, and better educational opportunities for their children.