1. Day 1 in Colombia – a photo blog of clients and staff… Click here to read the post.
2. My economic and emotional take on Colombia, day 2… Click here.
3. Agricultural finance, a yucca plant, and hibiscus growers in Nicaragua… Click here.
4. Meeting the artisans of Nicaragua’s Ojalá. Why YOU should take an Insight Trip…  Click here.

Read the travelers’ reflections at adventuringincolombianicaragua.tumblr.com, and if you’d like to travel on an Insight Trip to meet our clients and local staff, and see microfinance at work firsthand in Latin America and all over the world, check out the Insight Trip calendar at opportunity.org/insight. Buen viaje!

Bogotá’s red light district, zona roja, is gritty and grim. It teems with drug addicts, transvestites and menacing figures that circle heavily made up and skimpily clad women, some in see-through tops. Even at four in the afternoon, which was the only time it was safe for me to tour through the areas, they seemed to be doing a healthy amount of business.

I had gone to Santa Fe to visit Martha Holguin, a 37-year-old microfinance recipient. Martha lives in a small studio in a dilapidated building on a dead-end street. Somehow she has crammed a double bed and a bunk in the limited space. The space is decorated with stuffed animals hanging from sky blue walls. There is a Garfield, several Disney characters, a puppy and a blue rabbit.

Near the television set is a bar of soap, which the gregarious and dark haired Martha uses when she has to use the bathroom, which is down the dark and musty hall outside her apartment. The mildewed smell is so strong that when I look around, I notice mold in one corner of the room. Just below is Martha’s newborn grandson and 15-year-old daughter-in-law.

Martha brews and sells coffee. Waking early Monday through Saturday to combine sugar, cloves and cinnamon in a large metal pot, she makes several liters of coffee for 20 clients, who pay her several hundred pesos on a weekly basis. Around eight in the morning she delivers the coffee in newly bought plastic thermoses, with red and green tops, in nearby neighborhoods. Every afternoon, starting at 4:30, Martha collects the thermoses on a tricycle that she says is secondhand, though it could easily pass for third. “I bought it with my loan and savings,” she beams.

They are loans and savings made possible by Opportunity International, a Chicago-based nonprofit organization that provides microfinance loans worldwide. Incidentally, Opportunity made its first microloan in Colombia in 1971.

Martha has been a client with Opportunity for four loan cycles, each lasting 16 weeks. She was introduced to the organization through her 57-year-old mother, Blanca. Blanca was once one of the girls on the streets nearby. Today she sells snacks: potato chips, ice cream and Jell-O. The chips are kept in a glass chamber, prized like the Sultan’s jewels at the Topkapi Palace in Blanca’s apartment, which is right above Martha’s.

Both are enthusiastic about the microloans, which average about 100 dollars or 200,000 pesos. That was the amount of Martha’s first loan, which she used to buy coffee. The next loan was for 100,000 pesos more. The money from that was used to purchase an additional electric stove in order to brew larger quantities of coffee.

She pays off her loan on a weekly basis and puts away money in an Opportunity International savings account, which is mandatory for each microloan recipient. That is Martha’s only savings scheme. Neither Martha nor her mother has a bank account. They keep what money they earn in plastic Ziploc bags; Blanca on her person, Martha underneath her bed. “It’s okay,” Martha apologies when she shows it to me.

She tells me that she’s saving money to buy a motorcycle and a new apartment, out of Santa Fe. How soon that will be is unclear. Though Martha rattles off how much she pays for the coffee, cups, thermoses, sugar, cloves, cinnamon, soap, rent and electricity, there is no bookkeeping. “It’s all in my head,” she says.

When I ask Martha what she would like me to tell the world about her, she says, “Tell them Martha is a good person; that she wants to live a good life; that is happy; that she has four children and three grandchildren.”

Martha also wants to let the world know that she’s going to be a businesswoman. She wants to go beyond selling coffee to selling juice, snacks and empanadas. “I’m going to have four employees,” she says. “Wait and see.”

Part of me wants to believe Martha. Her enthusiasm and optimism, on par with Silicon Valley’s techies, left me speechless. Indeed, at one point during our chat, I lost my train of thought and had to pause awkwardly. Martha just smiled. It was that smile that made me wonder whether she really understood the challenges of scaling up a business and being an entrepreneur.

Entrepreneurs need more than just an idea. They need to understand their market and competition. They need to have a sustainability and growth strategy. Martha notes that through Opportunity International’s training workshops she’s only just learned about being responsible with money.

Vivian, Martha’s loan officer, tells me that Martha saves and pays back her loans on time. That’s significant and confirms what I do believe about microfinance: Whether or not Martha is an “entrepreneur” the microfinance loans she receives are making a difference in her life. It’s given her a purpose and drive. “I have a reason to wake up in the morning,” she says, “And not depend on anyone.”

Martha is standing on her own feet, but she still has a long way to go. “You’ll come back to see me as a businesswoman?” she asks. I take a deep breath to hold back my tears.

The original post can be found by clicking here.

1. The Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP) Microfinance Blog discusses the benefits and challenges of various tools used in microfinance and provides a forum to learn more about new microfinance initiatives. There are a variety of contributing writers who share their expertise on the nuances of microfinance, and CGAP also presents fact-based blog entries in addition to opinions on how to improve the industry.
2. The Nicholas D. Kristof blog is a favorite of many readers of The New York Times. This blog is not directly related to microfinance but discusses many of the world problems that microfinance addresses.  It tackles many development issues around the world and discusses issues ranging from hunger to education to women’s rights.
3. A Grameen Foundation blog (Creating a World Without Poverty) discusses Grameen’s work in microfinance and showcases thoughts and feelings from the organization’s volunteers in the field. It provides a variety of voices experiencing microfinance in action around the world.
4. The Wall Street Journal’s India Real Time blog provides a “daily pulse for the world’s largest democracy.” This blog is not solely about microfinance or poverty eradication but it does provides many articles related to daily life and the economic growth of India. It offers regular comments and critiques on the Indian microfinance industry.
5. The Center for Financial Inclusion blog from ACCION International covers and comments on the many new ventures currently in progress in the field of microfinance. It also discusses methods for how to enable more people to access microfinance services in the future.
6. Defeat Poverty provides reviews on current books in the field of development and microfinance, in addition to covering many other issues related to poverty eradication.
7. The India Microfinance blog discusses the issues and triumphs of the microfinance industry in India. It discusses many specifics on the financial tools used. India’s microfinance industry is critiqued by many and this blog provides voices which speak on either side of the issue.
8. The Banking with the Poor Network blog discusses microfinance in Asia and around the world, with a focus on a wide variety of organizations.
9. The MF Transparency blog deals with some of the challenges faced by for-profit and nonprofit microfinance organizations, and offers information and resources that encourage transparent pricing.
10. The myKRO blog serves as an online community where microfinance organizations can raise awareness about their work, offering and receiving commentary about their actions with other players in the field.

This post was written by Tara Kumar, an intern in the Outreach & New Initiatives department at Opportunity International and an undergraduate student at the University of Chicago studying Economics and Political Science.

Opportunity Ghana client Beatrice Boaten smiles while standing at her farm. (Photo: Sara Joe Wolansky)

We are sitting inside a small cozy room painted in a rich blue, complete with shelves boasting an array of decorative pieces, photographs and a poster of Jesus. Floral lace decorates the refrigerator and a single window with white curtains lets light in. There is one small old-fashioned television in the corner. This is Beatrice Duku Frimpong Boaten’s sitting room in a house she inherited over 30 years ago from her father, who was one of the community chiefs in her village, Nerebhi.

Along with this house, Beatrice also inherited four acres of land. After Beatrice retired as a teacher, she decided to convert the land into a cocoa farm. She worked as a farmer for 16 years, and in March 2010, she joined Opportunity International‘s agricultural finance program through Opportunity Ghana. As a result of this program, she has received fertilizers, insecticides and learnt farming techniques that have allowed her to increase her output from an average of five bags every year to 13 to 15 bags by the end of every cocoa season. Her income has also been boosted from the increased yield. But improving her own lifestyle and paying for her children’s education is not the only thing to come out of Beatrice’s relationship with Opportunity International. She felt encouraged enough by Opportunity loan officers to gather community members to form two Trust Groups and collectively they have made a community farm, which grows cocoa, plantains, maize, cassava and other crops for the community. Proceeds from the sale of these crops go into the Trust Group’s funds, which in turn pay back the loans farmers have incurred from Opportunity.

Loan officer Abena Sarpong (pictured left) and Beatrice Boaten look over the Trust Group's membership register in Beatrice's sitting room. (Photo: Sara Joe Wolansky)

Leading and working with the community has been a major part of Beatrice’s experience after using the loans and savings program. Farming has been a valued way of life for many of the older community members and by involving everyone through Trust Groups, Beatrice said that it created a greater respect and understanding of the profession in the younger community members. Some of her children want to return from school and help on the farm. Abena Sarpong, who took us to our first cocoa farm in Bonsaaso a few days ago, is also Beatrice’s loan officer. She told us that agriculture is a very important component of Ghana’s economy (more than 48% of GDP and 70% of the rural population depends on agriculture as a source of income) and must be fully developed, which is why Opportunity has invested a lot in agricultural finance.

We visited the community farm with Beatrice and Muhammad Opuku, another member of her Trust Group. Muhammad showed us how to harvest plantain and how a new farming technique they learnt is being applied. Using this technique they planted palm trees in rows, alternating the crops that are being grown to allow for a greater variety on the farm.

When Beatrice speaks about her love for the land she has cultivated all these years, her joy is infectious. During our interview she laughed at every pause in the conversation, her eyes twinkled when we asked her to give us a tour of the farm and when we attempted to thank her in Twi: “Meda’ase,” she grinned at our pronunciation and shook our hands vigorously before we took the long road back to Kumasi.

To read this post on the SOW Boston blog, click here. To read all recent blogs we have reposted from the Students of the World’s trip, click here.

Elementary School students at Christ is the Answer School in Kumasi, Ghana.

After arriving in a very lush Kumasi by bus, we settled into our guesthouse and prepared for our next set of interviews. We’re filming the schools involved in the IDP Rising Schools Program, an initiative created and implemented by the IDP Foundation, Inc., Opportunity International, and Sinapi Aba Trust (SAT). SAT, a member of the Opportunity International network, is an NGO in Ghana that offers microfinance services to clients, including loans to school proprietors to fund the building of quality local private schools. After 12 weeks of management training for school proprietors, and training for school caterers on sanitation, nutrition, and safety, the schools are given loans to improve their infrastructure and human resources. Today we visited two of those schools: Christ is the Answer Preparatory School and Romesco International School.

Anthony Kwasi Nyarku, a retired schoolteacher, founded Christ is the Answer Preparatory School in 1997. After retiring to his home village in Adansi-Dompoase, his wife encouraged him to found a school. He resisted—until he had a dream in which his brother showed him the plot of land on which Christ is the Answer would eventually be built. Anthony took this as a sign and began. His school started with four students and now serves about 180 students. In February 2010, SAT contacted him through a recommendation by Romesco International School, interviewed him, and eventually chose him for their loan program. Through the program, he learned to manage his money, keeping separate accounts for the school’s money and his own, saving and keeping track of petty cash.

We discussed with Anthony why he felt his school was an important addition to Ghana’s educational system. He explained that government schools often are undersupervised and a strong union protects the sometimes-neglectful teachers. His teachers, however, are closely overseen. Additionally, Christ is the Answer Preparatory School is able to provide this education to some students who cannot afford “even the uniform.” As a result of the hard work of Anthony, his teachers and his students, all 11 students who took last year’s Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE)–a required exam for any student wishing to go on to Senior High School–passed them, and received the third-highest scores in the area.

Rebecca Appiah, a 12-year-old Junior High School Form 1 student at Kumasi's Romesco International School.

Our second visit was to Romesco International School, founded in 2002 by Richard Danso Smith, formerly a schoolteacher in another nearby school. Originally, it was Ebenezer International School until he bought it. Richard started out with one wooden building without cement or mortar. Today he has 400 students and four buildings circling a vast field. The buildings are now firm structures, but the floors still require cement. Romesco International School has classes from Kindergarten to Junior High School Year 3. They received a loan in 2009, after Richard was looking for a reliable loan source to fix his school’s infrastructure. Richard too went through proprietor training and like Anthony he felt that the most helpful part was learning how to manage his accounts. He learned how to separate his private expenses from the school’s and how to always keep a petty cash ledger. He also felt that by keeping track of daily expenses, he was able to manage his teachers well and provide incentives to them.

Richard maintained that diligent monitoring of his teachers was the most important reason why private schools like his are effective. Through close supervision and using his teaching experience to train them to use interesting and engaging teaching techniques, Richard ensured that the academic standards remained consistently high. The students, he said, had been doing extremely well in the BECE, and his school’s results had ranked fifth in the district for the past few years. He also encouraged his students to have fun. Inter-house quizzes, football and netball matches seemed to be regular fixtures in this school. Serafina Asantewaa, a JHS third form student spoke to us excitedly about helping her house win the last quiz. After only a few years, the school seemed to have grown remarkably, but it still needs many improvements in its infrastructure. Both Anthony and Richard want to take advantage of computers and libraries, and plan on using their loans to do so. As we move into proprietor training sessions tomorrow, we will see exactly how SAT helps Richard and Anthony plan out the futures of their schools.

To read the post on the SOW Boston blog, click here. To read SOW’s followup blog on the proprietor training sessions, click here. Would you like to see Opportunity Ghana‘s educational microfinance programs firsthand? Travel with us in October on our Insight Trip to Ghana.

Meet Nana Owusu Acheampong of Bonsaaso, Ghana.

Wow. What a day! We left the hotel and started what would be a two-hour BUMPY ride. Actually, let me spend a minute explaining what I mean by bumpy. The road started out as paved, but that luxury only lasted about 15 minutes.  Eventually it felt more like an obstacle course for our driver than an actual road.

In the village of Bonsaaso, we were greeted by community leaders.  We were welcomed and we explained who we were.  We went through a short question-and-answer session with the leaders and then began to focus our questions on Nana Owusu Acheampong. He is the secretary of the “Blessed” Trust Group. All of the other members of the group refer to him as “Boss.” Nana is a man of about 60. He was born and raised in Bonsaaso, as was his wife and their children. He is a farmer by trade, but a philosopher at heart.

The building where we were meeting is his property and serves as a meeting ground for the community and visitors. A few years ago Nana installed a stereo so that people could have entertainment while they visited and played checkers. He quickly realized that it was costing him too much to power the stereo out of his own pocket. He came up with an idea. In addition to the stereo, he added 10 or so surge protectors. As people sat and met they could pay a small fee to charge their cell phones. This would pay for the generator, not only to charge the phones, but also to run the stereo. When we visited, there were roughly 40 phones and batteries being charged.

This is how your chocolate starts out. (A Ghanaian cocoa farmer processes his crop)

As a part of his training through Opportunity International Nana has begun to use fertilizer to increase his crop yields. Nana and his employees showed us how they harvest cocoa, take the seeds from the shell and set them to ferment. After our interview, a small group of us walked back with Nana to the village where he showed us the churches, the schoolhouse, as well as introducing us to other business men and women in the community. As Nana spoke, you could see the joy and excitement in his eyes that these things were happening in his community.

Riding back to the hotel on that BUMPY road, all I could think about was the pride that Nana had. He was proud of the work his community was doing and of their partnership with organizations like the Millennium Villages Project (MVP) and Opportunity Ghana. He is proud of the businesses he has built and that he was able to provide for his family. It’s a pride that the more economically privileged often take for granted. I know that when I wake up in the morning and walk down the hall to my air-conditioned office, I’ll think of Nana and his employees who woke up hours before me and trekked to the fields, before I complain about the the number of emails in my inbox. I’ll just say thank you for the emails and remind myself how lucky I am to have met a man named Nana from Bonsaaso.

To read Ian’s blog click here and see the SOW team’s full blog coverage here.

Here’s a question that 63 percent of Americans can’t answer: How much of our government spending goes toward foreign aid? The answer: less than 1 percent.

If you would like to sign ONE's petition to stop budget cuts for foreign aid, please click here.

According to a recent poll, Americans believe that the government spends more on defense and foreign aid than it does on Medicare and Social Security. In fact, Americans think that we spend an average of 27 percent on foreign aid—that’s more than what we spend on our military budget. And don’t even talk to me about GDP. Our GDP ranks No. 1, yet in 2009, we ranked in seventh place for aid funding.

It angers me that Congress is targeting foreign aid spending (of all things) for major cuts this year. That 1 percent funds important programs that save lives and advocate peace, stability and security beyond our borders. Even though it makes up a tiny percentage of our budget, we’ve been able to maximize that funding and put it toward effective programs like USAID, PEPFAR and the Global Fund that are helping to make a real difference in fighting extreme poverty and preventable disease.

Yet there have been proposals to bring down the bill that funds US diplomacy and assistance to poor countries by 17 percent from FY2010 amounts, including a 30 percent cut to development assistance from last year’s amount, a $450 million cut to the Global Fund and a 41 percent cut to humanitarian aid for disaster relief.

Let me translate these figures into human lives for you. If the Global Fund loses its funding, up to 58,286 HIV-positive pregnant women will not receive treatments to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV. About 6 million treatments for malaria will not be administered. 372,000 testing and treatments for tuberculosis will be halted. And 414,000 people living with HIV/AIDS will not be provided the antiretroviral medication they need to survive. As you can see, this is truly a matter of life and death.

But here’s the thing — you can do something about this right this very moment. Tell your senator to SAY NO to the budget cuts. We know Congress faces tough choices on the budget, but these cuts fall hardest on the people who can least afford them. Join more than [126,000] ONE members and sign our petition.

To read the original post on ONE Blog, click here.

Opportunity Mexico is reaching more microfinance clients like Marcelina Sanchez (pictured) who sells fried tacos from her stall in the "tianguis" (market).

In the past two years, Opportunity Mexico has been working hard to build its client base and reach more people with microfinance solutions to help them work their way out of poverty. Under the leadership of CEO Maria Clara Martinez, the institution has revamped its processes and increased its outreach by more than 27%, up from 4,907 loan clients one year ago. The team retained its 100% rate of operational sustainability during this time of significant growth.

Opportunity Mexico continues to improve its operational processes and expand its base in 2011, aiming to double loan client outreach. The institution will also launch individual loan products in June 2011 to provide qualified clients with training and loans geared toward established businesses.

In 2010, Opportunity Mexico improved its processes by:

• Establishing a partnership with the Youth Integration Center (a Mexican government entity) to provide clients with awareness training to prevent domestic violence and substance abuse.
• Enhancing existing, and developing new, staff training modules to achieve its goal of standardizing all processes and provide its clients with consistent financial products and services, and exceptional customer care.
• Conducting monthly loan officer training to enhance staff members’ skills and successfully instill clients with confidence, motivation and transformation within the Trust Group methodology.
• Partnering with Alpha International to provide all staff with foundational training in Christian principles. All the participants agreed that the training will positively impact their ability to be effective in their roles.

Stay tuned to the Opportunity Blog for more updates on our growth at Opportunity Mexico.

Breakfast…

A meticulously organized log book from the Trust Group meeting in Chennai today.

This morning, an officer from the U.S. Consulate in Chennai and the local attaché joined us for breakfast, but they didn’t get much of a chance to eat. Instead, they fielded probing questions from Opportunity’s Regional Director Linda Vander Weele and other members of the group about how India‘s poorest people can be protected and their economic futures stabilized. The answers revealed the complexities of the country’s fast-growing economy and made it clear that with over 800 million Indians still living below the poverty line, organizations like Opportunity would for many years be indispensable in the fight against poverty.

The Meeting…

The 12 women at this morning’s Trust Group opened their meeting by repeating a good-citizen pledge. On their third loan cycle, they believe that their financial independence not only benefits them and their families, but the community as well. They discussed interest payments and savings while passing around their Trust Group books, whose orderly entries would have left a CPA feeling envious. When the meeting closed, they thanked Opportunity, then apologized for having to run off. But it was time to go to work.

A glimpse into a Trust Group meeting in Chennai. Leader leads the group in their regular pledge:

For more travel blogs from Opportunity’s Insight Trip to India this week, click here.

Catherine Duclos gives a thumbs up as she Jumps for Opportunity.

My greatest fear is to miss out on opportunities that may come my way. I fear regret. There is so much to see, do, and feel, what if life goes too fast and I miss something? What if there’s just not enough time?

When realizing that my greatest fear has to do with opportunities I am fortunate enough to have, I am struck by the fact that some people–not only some, but the two billion people who live on less than $2 a day–do not even have options and opportunities. In a way my fear is a privilege, for I have options in my life, I have choices to make. When looking at it this way, it’s really not a fear but a gift.

Last Saturday, February 19th, I took part in Jump for Opportunity along with 28 vibrant and inspiring entrepreneurs from across the country. Although all of us may have had different fears, we were united by the same cause, the same conviction that we can create change and end poverty. When I arrived in Orlando I met a group of strangers. When I left, I said goodbye to friends. Our shared conviction is what made our bond so strong.

Catherine Duclos, passionate and inspired to jump out of a plane for poverty.

As I was flying through the air, seeing how vast the world below seemed, I couldn’t help but think of how small I really am–one of so many–and think of how easy it could be to think I am too small to make a difference. But I couldn’t think that. Jump for Opportunity came into being with one idea, one small and untouchable idea that came from one person, and was carried out with tremendous success. Given the opportunity, one person can make a change.

I did not jump to conquer my fear. I jumped because I believe in seizing opportunity, in sharing opportunity, and in giving opportunity.

The brave jumpers for Opportunity are quickly closing in on their collective $100,000 fundraising goal, but they won’t reach it without your help. To help them reach their goal, please support Catherine’s Jump for Opportunity fundraiser on OptINnow or at opportunitycan.ca. To see all the Jump fundraisers, go to jumpforopportunity.com and click on a Jumper’s photo.