What does one gift mean to one woman?

Clean Water through Community Leadership

For Ana Celia Acuña (left), a gift enabled her to bring clean drinking water to her Nicaraguan community. Ana and her neighbors had been without drinking water for many years because of an earthquake, so she set out to build an aqueduct. When investing in the project, Opportunity requested that this respected Trust Group member be invited to join the all-male La Laguna Community Cooperative. She’s their first-ever woman board member, and the bookkeeper and cashier for the water project. She recruited other women to join the board and now there are equal numbers of women and men solving the community’s critical issues. Opportunity’s investment in the project and its faith in Ana helped make her community safer and healthier.

A Quality Education for the Next Generation

For Comfort Appiah (left), one gift helped her bring education to the children of her neighborhood in Accra, Ghana. Fifteen years ago, Comfort saw the local children loitering and not going to school. She started Ahobrase Academy out of her home to give them a chance to learn. In 2009, she applied for a school proprietor loan from Opportunity Ghana to move to a new location. Today, Ahobrase serves more than 700 students from preschool to junior high who might not have had a chance for an education, and provides much-needed employment to 38 staff members from the community. Comfort is changing hundreds of people’s futures and she dreams of expanding her school to give back even more.

To those who joined the One Woman Holiday Challenge, thank you for helping us empower women like Ana, Deepa and Comfort. Because of you, women like them are impacting their communities and changing the future for their families.

This is a great achievement but there are still millions more women around the world who need an opportunity to improve their lives. If you’d like to invest in one woman’s future, it’s not too late to make a contribution » Thank you!

Feed more hungry people. Rwandan rice farmer Elina Uwingeneye is an agricultural finance client who uses loans to grow more crops with better fertilizers, increasing yields.	Be nice to your mom. Loan client Maria Elena Tovar Gonzalez, from Guadalajara, Mexico, poses with her son. 93% of Opportunity’s loans go to women like Maria around the world.
Learn a new skill. Experienced artisan Maria de los Angeles Ordjonez carves elaborate designs into decorative pieces and household items to sell in her Honduras village.	Educate the next generation. Bright Ofori (left) and Clementina Dankwa learn at the Richmercy School, Ashaiman, Ghana, where proprietor Mercy Senyegah receives loans to improve her school.
Be a good friend. Beatrice Boaten and her fellow members of the Nerebehi Cocoa Farmers Association process the cocoa harvest together in Ghana.	Bring someone joy. A client who makes jewelry surprises loan officer Valamarthi with a beautiful bouquet in Chennai, India.

What are your goals for the New Year? Leave them in the comment field below.

Nancy and Fred McDougal with an Opportunity client in India

“We’ve learned so much about the wider world than we could have learned otherwise,” Fred said. Having taken four previous Insight Trips, the couple brought their grandchildren to see Opportunity’s work in Colombia. Kevin, then age 11, was particularly absorbed by the experience.

“He’d sit with the Trust Group and really listen intently,” said Nancy. “At the end of the trip I asked him what impressed him most and he said, ‘They have so little and we have so much, but they’re so grateful.’ Hearing that meant everything to us.”

This article was published on page 7 of the fall 2012/winter 2013 issue of Opportunity’s Impact newsletter.

Loan officer Valamarthi (right) delivers transformational training to the Roja Trust Group, including loan client Deepa (left) in Chennai, India.

“Poverty is not just a deficit, not just a lack of resources, it’s a deprivation,” said Daniel Ryumugabe, transformational impact manager for Opportunity Rwanda. “If you offer only one solution — loans — the client cannot get out of the poverty trap because of other environmental problems, such as poor health or financial illiteracy.”

Improved economic status is the most obvious component of Opportunity’s transformation model. With the opportunity to expand a business with a small loan and training, our clients are able to feed their families and put their children in school. They develop steady incomes and create jobs to help their neighbors improve their lives. Opening a savings account and purchasing insurance exponentially expands their economic choices.

Opportunity also believes in personal transformation — helping people build their capacity not just in business, but in life. Through Trust Groups, Opportunity’s gateway lending model, clients learn life-saving information about HIV prevention and disaster planning, in addition to business skills. They also discover more effective ways to communicate and resolve conflicts with family members and others in their communities.

The support a client enjoys from her Trust Group, and the nurturing she receives from her loan officer, who is equal parts advocate and counselor, lead to an understanding that others are invested in her. This awareness fosters her growing sense of self-worth and confidence. Additionally, the administrative, financial and managerial skills she learns reinforce her determination to plan and save for a better future.

Transformational impact manager Daniel Ryumugabe meets with farming client Felicite Mukandahiro in Kibungo, Rwanda.

When businesses and individuals thrive, it strengthens the community’s social fabric, thereby contributing to social transformation. Former loan client Valamarthi became a loan officer for Opportunity India after experiencing transformation in her own life. Moved by the plight of those at the lowest rung of India’s caste system, she resolved to help traditionally stigmatized communities of lepers and gypsies to create better lives for themselves, and convinced Opportunity to offer them loans. Said Valamarthi, “It is our way of telling them, ‘We value you as people. We’re invested in you. You’re as worthy as the rest of us.’”

Opportunity now teaches marginalized groups to make and sell candles and other products, and has partnered with an organization that trains them to refurbish bicycles. Valamarthi said that the gypsies, typically nomadic, have settled, built homes and are sending their children to school — a social upgrade that would have been much more difficult prior to working with Opportunity.

Opportunity’s Code of Conduct — 10 guiding principles posted in each Opportunity branch in the local language — ensures all clients are treated with dignity, fairness and respect. In fulfillment of the code, we strive to make all fees transparent, clearly explain contractual obligations, and support our clients in their transformational life change.

Further, Opportunity encourages clients to live selflessly, embracing a love of community and neighbor, and to care especially for people who are more impoverished or marginalized than they.

At Opportunity, we’re not just about microfinance, we’re about transformation. For our clients’ sakes, we are committed to the creation and delivery of the best financial services possible to help them transform their businesses, their lives and their communities.

This article was the cover story in the fall 2012/winter 2013 issue of Opportunity’s Impact newsletter.

CEO Sam Chandar (left) visits with a client (June 2012).

At the same time, in India, where Cyclone Neelam touched down Wednesday in the states of Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, eleven people have been reported dead, power is down and schools and businesses are closed. Though relief and rescue teams across the country’s southern states have been deployed to combat the destruction caused by the storm, and the government is working to respond, the recovery will undoubtedly be slow for more remote and impoverished areas of southern India, where many Opportunity clients reside.

Early Wednesday afternoon, as an update to our staff, Harry Turner, CEO of Opportunity’s Global Microfinance Operations, sent this message from Sam Chandar, CEO of one of our microfinance institutions in India, describing the preparations for the storm.

Two of Opportunity’s women clients from Chennai (International Women’s Day, March 2011)

Chennai is bracing itself for the onslaught of Cyclone Neelam approaching us at a speed of 85 kilometers per hour [about 50 mph] and [it is] targeted to hit us in the next couple of hours. All harbors, schools, colleges and government institutions have been closed. Hundreds of trees are uprooted and there are power outages in several areas. It is raining heavily across Tamil Nadu. There are possibilities that the cyclone may change direction at the last minute and head for Andhra Pradesh. It is expected that Mahabalipuram on the coast will also suffer damage. As a precautionary measure we have advised our staff to leave early and return to their homes. As usual, in the spirit of [Opportunity India], we try to maintain calm even during the storm.

It’s times like these that we at Opportunity are grateful that we can offer some financial stability and help to our clients in extreme poverty. When a natural disaster hits, families already in a precarious financial position risk slipping back into a cycle of poverty. But fortunately, our Indian loan clients have support in rebuilding and growing their businesses if the unexpected occurs. In addition to small business loans, Opportunity India is also developing an emergency loan product and they’re working with our insurance subsidiary, MicroEnsure, to pilot health, life and accident insurance. In partnership with Habitat for Humanity, Opportunity India conducted a housing survey to measure the need and interest for financing home improvements. We’ve disbursed over 150 housing loans, which include loans for home improvement and incremental building purposes, as of September 2012.

Clients receive orientation for Opportunity India’s housing loan program in June 2012.

Though these products are helpful for our Indian clients, many undoubtedly will still struggle to protect their families and pick up the pieces after this tragedy. Please keep our U.S. colleagues and friends affected by Sandy, and our global staff and clients in India who are struggling with Neelam, in your thoughts and prayers now and in the coming days and weeks as they deal with the tragic effects of these storms.

We’ll continue to provide you with updates and reports from our leaders about our clients and our staff on the ground in India to let you know how they are faring after Cyclone Neelam.

Rampant poverty, which has festered for far too long, is linked to social unrest and threats to peace and security. On this International Day, let us make an investment in our common future by helping to lift people out of poverty so that they, in turn, can help to transform our world. -UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon

School proprietor Mercy Senyegah in a classroom at Richmercy School, Ghana

Nothing is more important to ensuring a stable world than to empower people at the bottom of the pyramid to work their way out of poverty. To do that, you must start with the most basic but essential building block–education. This is more than common sense, there are facts, including these from USAID, to back it up. A few of the most alarming:

For every year of school completed, individual earnings increase by 10%.

A girl who completes basic education is three times less likely to contract HIV/AIDS.

A child born to an educated mother is twice as likely to survive to age five.

Education impacts more than just earnings, it creates better health, wider economic growth and alleviates poverty. (usaid.gov)

Students learning at Richmercy

Meet one woman working to make this goal of providing an education–and a better future for all children–a reality. She is Mercy Senyegah, the proprietor of the Richmercy School in Ashaiman, Ghana. In Ghana, though public education is free, the quality of the education at government-funded schools is often poor. So Mercy was determined to bring the opportunity of education to local Ashaiman families with few other options. When she first started her school, she had four classes of students that all had to share one classroom, and one in the school kitchen. She says that in the beginning, she didn’t know how to save and she felt she needed guidance. Today, she serves 250 students at her school, and has nine classrooms, six teachers, and five other staff. She used Opportunity loans to add classrooms, cement the floors, hire more teachers and serve lunch to children whose families can’t provide them with food. With future loans, and the guidance and advice of her loan officer Gabriel Addai Duah, Mercy one day wants to build a library, a computer lab and a lavatory at Richmercy.

Mercy and students in the schoolyard

Given the chance to learn, even children living in deeply debilitating poverty can transform their lives. Parents understand that and so do proprietors like Mercy.

In Ghana, Uganda and Malawi, 332 school proprietors are currently using $3 million in Opportunity loans and customized business training to improve their schools. (In Ghana, these loans are made possible in part by our partnership with the IDP Rising Schools Program.) In addition, over 2,600 families in three African countries and India have accessed school fee loans that help parents with unpredictable incomes cover tuition. Our education finance tools make it possible to reach more girls and boys, giving them a chance at a better future. Because of better education, and their ability to complete more years of school, they are almost guaranteed to have choices in life that their parents never had.

If you’d like to support this work, now is the time. Through several generous supporters, we’re offering a match on all gifts to our education program up to $75,000. So you can double your impact, sending more girls and boys to school, creating a more stable future for developing countries and the world. Learn more at opportunity.org/child »

Banking on Education:

Banking on Education from Opportunity International on Vimeo.

The Day was officially enacted by a UN General Assembly Resolution this past March, which recognized that the “empowerment of and investment in girls” is “critical to economic growth” and to achieving the UN Millennium Goals (including the eradication of extreme poverty). It stated that girls’ “meaningful participation in decisions that affect them” is key in “breaking the cycle of discrimination and violence and in promoting and protecting the full and effective enjoyment of their human rights.” It recognized that “empowering girls requires their active participation in decision-making processes and the active support and engagement of their parents, legal guardians, families and care providers, as well as boys and men and the wider community.”

Ramya, a scholarship recipient, takes the mike to introduce herself to Insight Trip travelers when they visit her school.

The theme of today is “Too Young to Wed.” The Nike Foundation finds that when a girl receives seven or more years of education, she will marry four years later and have 2.2 fewer children. When women wait until after their teenage years to have children, it dramatically improves maternal and infant mortality. Giving girls the tools to take a more active role in public life, and the skills to be financially independent, not only improves their well-being but that of their future children too! And this week, this emphasis on the importance of education is even more poignant as we read the sad news that Malala Yousufzai, a champion of girls’ education and girls’ rights in Pakistan, and two other girls were shot by extremists while walking to school. Speaking today at a high-level panel discussion, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon noted that the Day is also an occasion to highlight the “alarming” levels of discrimination, violence and abuse that girls face worldwide. “The attack on [Malala] was abhorrent and cowardly,” said the Secretary-General. “The terrorists showed what frightens them most: a girl with a book. Nowhere in the world should it be an act of bravery for a young girl to go to school.”

In honor of the Day, we’d like to share the story of one little girl who is full of hope that she will be able to achieve her dreams. She is the recipient of a scholarship through Opportunity’s education finance program in India. Her name is Ramya, she is in first grade and she wants to be a doctor when she grows up. (See the picture at right of Ramya and several of her classmates who are also scholarship recipients.) Several of our supporters and staff met her while on an August Insight Trip to India, and she clearly stole their hearts. Adele Nandan, director of our International Education department, says, “Whenever I look at this picture, Ramya makes me smile. She is so excited to share her dreams with us when she grows up.”

At Opportunity, we’re inspired by the hopes of little girls around the world, who dare to dream about achieving their goals and receiving an education, so that they can have a voice and have choices that their parents never had. That’s the significance of the International Day of the Girl. And it’s why we’re motivated to empower girls.

Episode 1 (Original Airdate: Monday, October 1)

Watch Half the Sky: Turning Oppression Into Opportunity- EP 1 on PBS. See more from Independent Lens.

Episode 2 (Original Airdate: Tuesday, October 2)

Watch Half the Sky: Turning Oppression Into Opportunity- EP 2 on PBS. See more from Independent Lens.

Banking on Education from Opportunity International on Vimeo.

We’re proud to say that Opportunity is partnering with the growing Half the Sky movement as part of our commitment to invest in women. Ninety-three percent of our loans go to women, who consistently show inspiring resilience and determination to change their own world and the future of their children. Over the next few weeks, Half the Sky will be highlighting organizations that provide educational and economic empowerment solutions to gender inequality and the oppression of women. The movement is inspired by journalists Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn’s book, Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide.

Jayanthi, a loan officer at Opportunity India’s Saidapet branch, started as a Trust Group client. She’s pictured here with her two young daughters Lavanya and Abinaya.

Using video, websites, games, blogs and other educational tools, Half the Sky raises awareness of women’s issues, but also promotes concrete, market-based solutions—like microfinance—to fight these problems and empower women.

Learn more about our partnership at opportunity.org/halfthesky. Join the conversation about women’s empowerment on Facebook and Twitter.

If you’d like to invest in women, visit opportunity.org/give to empower a woman working her way out of poverty.