Opportunity International
Women pack up their businesses at the end of the day at the crowded Grand Marche market in Kinshasa, Congo
The Grand Marche market in Kinshasa brims with tens of thousands of vendors. To the untrained eye, the market is full of chaos and confusion. To those who dare to look past the sea of people, however, the Democratic Republic of Congo’s largest market is an organized, catalogued, and thriving economic system.
Delegates from Opportunity International on a recent trip to the Democratic Republic of Congo soon discovered that there was more to the story than met the western-trained eye. Visitors are required to gain permission from the Queen of the Market (a title of true honor) to wander around the winding pathways between tightly-packed stalls. The Mayor of the Market lists the vendors present and their businesses as he proudly shows off his domain. The infrastructure is unexpected, and looks different than traditional infrastructure, but it works.
In a market like this it is hard to believe that only 1% of the DRC’s 66.5 million people have bank accounts.
Without access to formal financial services, the vendors in this marketplace are unable to get a loan that will help them to grow their business. They cannot safely save the profits that they make. They do not have the ability to take out insurance to keep them from losing their business if a fire devastated the market. They cannot gain additional structured training.
Opportunity International, a ONE partner organization, has plans to open a formal financial institution (or FFI) in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Ultimately, the organization’s goal is to bring loans, savings, insurance, and training to those who are living on less than $2 per day. With 99% of the population in need of banking services, Opportunity is poised to enter a market with much potential.
In this country roughly the geographical size of Europe, plagued by war, economic instability, and corruption, an Opportunity International formal financial institution can help to make the difference between families being able to afford only three meals per week to families being able to afford three meals per day.
To learn more about Opportunity’s commitment to providing microfinance solutions to the working poor in almost 30 countries, visit www.opportunity.org.
-Sonja Egeland Kelly, Opportunity International
With Mother’s Day coming up, I’ve been thinking more about the heroic mothers I met on a recent trip to Ghana and Uganda. They shared with me how they were using loans from Opportunity International to build businesses that provided income to send their children to school, put nutritious food on the table, buy or improve their homes and even put money away for the future. Many of them care for AIDS orphans, employ their neighbors and take on leadership roles in their communities.
I’d like to introduce you to a special woman I met in Ghana. Rose Adjei is 39 and married with two children. She was Opportunity’s first client in her community, forming a Trust Group of 26 other women living in poverty who wanted to start businesses. (Visit http://www.optinnow.org for more information on this lending methodology.) With her first loan of $25 in 1998, Rose started selling groceries on a tabletop. Today, she is the proud owner of a grocery store and a Kente products shop, and employs seven young men to weave the kente cloth. She is repaying her 14th loan from Opportunity, this one for almost $2,000. With proceeds from her business, Rose has been able to send her children to the best schools in her area.
Rose Ajdei, an Opportunity International client, at Rose’s shop in Bonwire Ghana.
I invite you to visit OptINnow to learn more about Opportunity’s women clients, their businesses and their communities. There, you also can check out the heartwarming Global Opportunity Quilt sponsored by the Women’s Opportunity Network. This Mother’s Day, I’m purchasing tribute patches on the virtual quilt to honor special women in my life and to give a hand-up to women who need it the most. I can choose from several beautiful Mother’s Day patches by artist Dawn Feller, and then write a tribute that can be read by everyone visiting the virtual quilt. Each woman I honor receives an email with a link to view the quilt plus a gift card that can be used to help another woman with a life-changing loan at OptINnow. It’s fun to visit the quilt (I must admit…I do it several times daily) to see all the wonderful messages that have been posted.
Happy Mother’s Day to all the women in the world who make a difference!
-Ruth-Anne Renaud, Vice President of Women’s Philanthropy, Opportunity International, rarenaud@opportunity.org
Global Opportunity Quilt created by the Women’s Opportunity Network and you at www.optinnow.org/quilt
Last weekend I attended the Opportunity International Governors’ Conference in San Francisco to discuss how small loans (somewhere around $100) are being used to transform communities. Microfinance has been an important arm of the global anti-poverty strategy, and Opportunity International is ONE organization providing financial aid to small businesses throughout Africa. This conference revealed specifics of microfinance, supporting ideas and the importance of ONE.
Early in the conference, I met three passionate women, Ruth Ann, Karen, and Amma (featured in the photo), who kindly took the time to discuss an important book with me. In the words of Opportunity International, the book One Hen is: inspired by the life story of Opportunity International’s Dr. Kwabena Darko, chairman of the Ghana board and member of the Opportunity International Board. One Hen tells the story of Kojo, a boy from Ghana who turns a small loan into a thriving farm and a livelihood for many. With this tiny loan, Kojo buys a hen. A year later, Kojo has built up a flock of 25 hens. With his earnings Kojo is able to return to school. Soon Kojo’s farm grows to become the largest in the region.” The book is being given as gifts and being read to children in schools and churches. Amma, Karen, and Ruth Ann carefully explained how ONE Hen is helping children grasp the importance of compassion and the benefits of microfinance. The hope is children will see how ONE person can make a difference through opportunity and entrepreneurship. After reading the story, children can then go online, play games, take a quiz, and read success stories to essentially gain a unique perspective of world’s outside their own.
Like many challenges facing the developing world, I learned providing loans was not as easy as I thought and not quite the same as loans we offer here in the United States. The biggest challenge is (more…)
The food crisis is taking its toll on Opportunity’s microfinance clients. Opportunity International is one of the largest and oldest microfinance networks, and I’ve seen first-hand how a small business loan or a safe place to save hard-earned money can make a big difference in keeping food on the table for the poor. Yet in 16 years of working in microfinance, I haven’t seen anything quite like global reach of the current food crisis.
One of Opportunity’s clients in India, Selvi Mani, just told us:
“We have reduced our consumption of vegetables and meat. Last week, we went to the market and brought provisions for ($4.50) This week, the same items cost ($7).”
In Mozambique and Ghana, clients are tapping into their savings accounts to buy food, make their loan repayments, and keep their businesses going. The good news is that they have savings accounts for the first time in their lives—but the bad news is they are already eating through the small safety nets they had built up.
In Rwanda, clients are taking their children out of school.
Opportunity is focused on long-term solutions to hunger, and we’re convinced that basic financial services are absolutely critical in allowing the poor to manage their money and protect themselves from shocks. But meanwhile, we’re also tapping into our infrastructure of 6,000 loan officers worldwide who are now refocusing their weekly business training sessions – helping our clients cut costs, diversify their businesses, and manage their personal finances.
In the Philippines, Opportunity is preparing to sell emergency food supplies to clients at discounted rates. In Ghana, our Trust Groups (lending groups) are helping to identify those in the community who are most at risk.
In Malawi, Opportunity’s crop insurance program has yielded average increases of 150% for several thousand small holder farmers, and we are expanding this program in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia.
It’s all hands on deck, and that doesn’t seem likely to change any time soon.
-Susy Cheston, Senior Vice-President, Policy, Opportunity International
To learn more about our work, please visit www.opportunity.org
It takes money to make money, but poor people in Mozambique don’t have access to credit. Commercial banks don’t want to lend to them because there is no incentive in lending tiny amounts of money in such high-risk, isolated areas. Today, I visited Matola province in Mozambique. I met with Opportunity International, an incredible organization that gives microfinance loans to individuals and groups.
Microfinance loans are small amounts of money (often as little as $50 or $100) that enable very poor people, especially women, to start or expand small businesses. These loans are a vital resource in poor communities, where people have trouble accessing credit from traditional banks and money-lenders often charge exorbitant interest rates.
Their average loan from Opportunity International is small – around $170 dollars – and after just two years of operation the organization is already breaking even in the country, meaning it can expand its operations to reach even more people.
Study after study has shown that in spite of high levels of poverty, high risk and rapidly changing environments, good microfinance programs boast a repayment rate of more than 95%. Evidence also indicates that income generated from microfinance projects can spur wider development benefits because borrowers, especially women, are likely to use their extra income to invest in health care or education for their families.
We were taken to meet two groups of women whose lives had been transformed by the loans. They were able to use their money to buy stock to sell at their market stalls selling biscuits, clothes, charcoal etc. One woman had even used her money to open a restaurant. The great thing about talking to these women was how happy they were. They were so cheerful and delighted to show us around.
One woman, Rabia, has five children who live with her (in fact we met two of them – they were doing their homework at their mums stall). Rabia has one of the best success stories. She took us to see her old house, which was tiny and made of iron sheeting, and the new one she is building with the proceeds of her stall (picture above). The new house is huge (bigger than my house!) and really well organized – one room is bigger than her entire old place. As you can imagine, we were really inspired by these women.
It’s important to keep things in perspective though. One woman we spoke to was happy that she had increased her income, but she still only spent $4 a day on feeding her family of 5. It was fantastic to see what a difference a small loan could make to peoples’ lives, but we could also see that there is a long way to go to lift the community out of poverty.
-Hermione Davies
Nov 16th, 2007 5:03 PM UTC
By Field
The ONE Campaign, Habitat for Humanity, Opportunity International, and Women’s Edge Coalition came together to create a briefing for Hill staff at the Capitol Building today about the GROWTH Act. (S. 2069) Senators Durbin and Hutchison hosted the event, which we called: “Fighting Poverty with Common Sense: Investing in Women’s Economic Opportunity.”
The impressive turn-out led to a great joke by Susy Cheston, Senior Vice President for Policy at Opportunity International: After observing the standing -room-only crowd that had gathered in the back of the room, she remarked, “You should all receive a sticker that says, ‘I stood up for Women today!’”
Along with Susy Cheston were four other speakers, all with extensive knowledge and advice about empowering women to lift themselves, and their families, out of poverty. They were Nora O’Connell, Vice President for Global Development Policy at that Women’s Edge Coalition; Donne Cameron, Senior Director for International Programs for Habitat for Humanity; Shade Bembatoum-Young, Founder and Executive Director of African Sustainable Small Enterprise Export Development Foundation in Lagos, Nigeria; and S.K. Guha, Senior Program Specialist at UNIFEM.
The panelists discussed first-hand experiences, insight, and policy objectives relating to the GROWTH Act. The Act focuses U.S. international assistance on proven strategies to enable women to lift themselves and their families out of poverty. If passed, (more…)
