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!

1. An Insightful Journey

Family Week travelers with the Amigos del Progreso Trust Group in Cartagena, Colombia

At Opportunity, we know it’s important to visit our field staff, meet our clients, and connect with the people and communities we serve. We also feel that our donors should have the opportunity to see this work firsthand through our Insight Trips. A life-changing experience, this year we saw the number and diversity of our Insight Trips grow. In March, a group celebrated the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day in India, in June we hosted our Family Week trip to Colombia, and in July a group of YAO supporters visited Tanzania. We hope you were able to be a part of these great experiences and if not, we invite you to check out the opportunities this year to join us on a trip as we visit clients and staff in countries from Latin America to Africa to Asia.

2. From 18,000 Feet in the Air to the White House

In February, young professional Sarah jumped out of a plane for our clients in Tanzania.

• Jump for Opportunity showed how passionate and daring our YAO members are! On February 19, 2011, 29 adventurers, from YAO supporters to Opportunity staff, jumped out of a plane at 18,000 feet to raise support for our clients in Tanzania. The idea came from one YAO member, challenging others to risk jumping out of a plane in solidarity with our loan clients who take risks every day through their own business ventures. The event raised over $100,000 for our clients in Tanzania, and the unique approach also helped launch it to the final round of the Stay Classy Awards in their Most Creative Fundraiser category.
• A plane wasn’t the only place YAO celebrated young entrepreneurs’ work and support in sustainable development. YAO, along with Empact, spoke at the White House during the FEE (Future of Entrepreneurship Education) Summit in November. Empact presented their Empact 100, a list of the top 100 companies started by young entrepreneurs who encourage local investment in communities and social responsibility.

3. The 100th Anniversary of International Women’s Day

The image of Opportunity Kenya client Judith Godiah, and her children, featured in the special supplement of USA Today

This year was the centennial celebration of International Women’s Day, observed on March 8. In addition to Opportunity’s International Women’s Day Insight Trip to India, we also chose this important date to launch our 2011 Banking on Women initiative. The two-month campaign honored women worldwide and built awareness for the impact financial services have on their lives and families. USA Today also featured a special supplement in honor of IWD entitled “Investing in Women & Girls,” which included Opportunity’s work empowering women–who make up 84% of our client base—with small business loans, tools and services.

4. The Opportunity Family is growing

Vice Governor of Central Bank of Congo at Opportunity DRC's ribbon-cutting

We are always excited to be able to continue our microfinance work in new areas. On May 19, we were thrilled to open our doors in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Local and national government officials, as well as Opportunity country and international staff, joined the event alongside our new clients. Words cannot completely describe the tenor of the day, so please feel free to watch the video of dancing and celebration as Opportunity takes its first official steps in the DRC bringing financial services to a new entrepreneurs and communities.

5. Top 40 is Not Just for Ryan Seacrest…

The "Side by Side" gala at the International Market Square in Minneapolis.

• Devex, a leader in international development resources, named Richard Leftley, President and CEO of MicroEnsure, one of London’s top 40 development leaders under 40. Furthermore, in June, MicroEnsure won the FT/IFC Sustainable Finance Award, organized by the Financial Times and the International Finance Corporation, a member of the World Bank Group. The major award recognized MicroEnsure’s work in creating life insurance products in Ghana through mobile phone technology.
• Opportunity International also turned 40 this year! We celebrated this milestone at our conference in San Francisco in October, and at our gala events in Minneapolis in November, and Phoenix in December. The events captured the spirit of founder, Al Whittaker, to serve and equip those in poverty, highlighted the lives already touched by Opportunity over the years, and challenged all to continue that dream by raising funds and support for Opportunity.

This year we celebrated first steps, and anniversaries. We celebrated the role of women, and young professionals highlighted the work of our clients in unconventional ways. At Opportunity, we eagerly look forward to what 2012 will bring, and invite you to continue with us along the way.

“I want  to give you a whistle-stop tour of the last five years at MicroEnsure,” Richard Leftley says.

Background on MicroEnsure

• When a woman asked me where we would be if her children got sick or her property got damaged in a fire, I realized that was what we needed to do. We needed to protect people from falling back into poverty after a disaster.
• In 2002, we spent time with clients assessing their needs, we began with health products for HIV and we expanded to funeral and then property insurance, which is especially important in high-density urban environments with fires and other disasters.
• The MicroEnsure board then challenged us to expand with more products and so we offered weather index crop insurance.
• We found that people needed to be paid within days or weeks but local insurance companies could only pay in months and years, and some didn’t do health insurance. So we increased our control over underwriting, while still working through the local insurance companies.

Today at MicroEnsure

• Mobile phone companies have turned out to be the key.  We partner with companies in Asia and Africa, where there are 5,000 new mobile phone clients every day. We offer a product through the mobile phone companies where people receive a certain amount of insurance for free just for using their phones.
• MicroEnsure has 3.2 million clients. In July 2011 alone, we grew by 500,000 new clients, and we hope to exceed 4 million clients by the end of the year.
• Our challenges today: MicroEnsure is three and a half years old. We spent the first two years understanding and building partnerships and went from 600,000 to 2 million clients in 2010. We continue to try to push boundaries, developing innovative products.

Caller question: About the mobile phone insurance product—is it linked to airtime and amount of customer use?

It is linked to customer use and airtime. Trust is crucial. We’ve found that people in poverty don’t trust insurance companies but they do trust mobile phone companies. Mobile phone companies investigated what would make people even more loyal and they found that people wanted insurance. So we have implemented a free life insurance contract. Customers voluntarily sign up by text messaging the company. Everyone gets a low level of life insurance for free, but if they use more air time to call or text, then they can earn higher levels of insurance, the company texts them and lets them know their level of usage month by month and how much insurance it’s earned them for the next month. They simply get a text at the end of the month that says what they’ve earned in free insurance.

In Ghana, we are working to sign up millions because virtually no one has insurance. Then we will go back and contact the client. They see how the free insurance has protected them, so we ask, “Would you like to pay a little more and add your family to your insurance plan?” Then later, we ask, “Would you like to add a health insurance policy for $1 a month?” We have found if we go right in and offer health insurance, people don’t trust you enough yet, and they won’t buy. But if build up to it, they will trust you and they will see how beneficial it is for them to buy it. This is proving to be a successful model.

Staff question from Opportunity VP Jennifer Mitrenga: I recently got back from an Insight Trip to Tanzania with the Young Ambassadors. We went and saw MicroEnsure’s health insurance product firsthand. Could you share a little about that?

Our health insurance product sprung from clients’ needs. They like life insurance products but as one woman said to me, “We’re only going to die once, but we’ll go to the doctor two to three times a year, so can you help with that cost?” In India we offer health insurance for $10/year for a family of four, and it covers inpatient hospitalization. It’s cashless with an ID card. We handle all financial costs and processes for the clients behind the scenes. We chose India to pilot that product because it’s simpler to operate there. We learned a lot.

We then wanted to do health insurance in Africa, so we chose Tanzania and began with the Kilimanjaro Native Cooperative Union (KNCU), a coffee growers’ union of several hundred members. They wanted a health insurance policy. The model we designed for them included all doctor visits for the family. We determine the annual costs of this and then we pay up front. If a farmer is hospitalized for any reason, we have provided extra insurance to cover that. We go in and advocate for their health too—if we find there are any problems with doctors, we can go in and change their behavior. We underwrite the product and we manage it, and we built out a network of existing clinics who agreed to be part of the product. We go to each of the clients’ homes and ID them with fingerprints. In fact, we downloaded an app for our mobile devices using open source software and tailored it for only $7. Now we want to scale up to reach 100,000 families in Tanzania by the end of 2012. We’re looking to set up a new vehicle called MicroEnsure Labs to innovate new ideas.

Caller question: Congratulations on your tremendous growth in the last few years. As you look forward, give us a brief executive summary of where you hope to be in five years.

We’re going to separate out our core business–mobile phones and microfinance. We realized we need to bring in strategic partners to stabilize and grow the mobile phone aspect of the business. I will bring in more companies to partner and grow that sector. Right now, we’re exclusively owned by Opportunity, but we could partner with more stakeholders who wish to get involved with us. We’re seeing that the partnerships that we have–at the rates our mobile phone partnerships are growing–expect to get up to 100 million people, so we’re growing fast.

We do need to focus on research and development to bring more impactful products to our clients and innovate our distribution policies. Not just microfinance, though that’s very important, but through mobile phone companies and the Internet. Much like the growth of mobile phones in the last few years, the Internet will explode across Africa in the next three years, and most mobile phones on the continent will become 3G. This all needs to be properly financed through philanthropy. It took seven years of Opportunity’s support through grants and donations to create our current model. We can shorten that cycle to 12 months because of what we’ve already learned. We do need individuals to support our work to help us innovate.

Want to learn more from Richard Leftley? Attend the breakout session “Microinsurance: A Powerful Safety Net” led by Richard at Opportunity’s annual conference, Oct. 14-15 in San Francisco. Go to opportunity.org/conference.

The child of a client in Kampala, Uganda

The daughter of a Rwandan dairy farmer client

Rwanda- What does the future hold for this daughter (left) of a Rwandan farmer living in poverty?

After surviving the genocide, and being given a single cow, the mother and her family slowly have been rebuilding their lives as subsistence dairy farmers, with the help of an Opportunity microloan. Life is hard as all the water and food for the cow must be brought in manually each day on a bicycle or by walking, carrying the burden of heavy water containers for a great distance.

Still, there is optimism about the future. The single cow has given birth to three additional cows, two of which the family has kept. The opportunity for improvements in productivity are great, and there is hope for the future.

Rwanda- At a Trust Group meeting (right), an Opportunity client in the rural agricultural village of Nyamata describes how her microloan and the Trust Group have transformed her life by allowing her to buy land, build a house, feed her children, provide schooling, and achieve dignity for herself in her community.

She says that the lessons her loan officer has given her on running a business are very helpful and that her community of friends in the Trust Group give her support and encouragement, helping her solve problems and looking toward the future.

Several of the members of this Trust Group were widowed by the genocide. We saw a monument to the victims on the road, a short distance outside of town.

A Trust Group meeting in the village of Nyamata, Rwanda

Opportunity supporter Fred of Hillsborough, Calif. writes of his journey traveling with fellow supporters and Opportunity staff on an Insight Trip to Rwanda and Uganda in August to see firsthand the impact of our Banking on Africa campaign.

Stay tuned to the Opportunity Blog for more from the Banking on Africa travelers.

On this trip, we’ve learned that 50 percent of Uganda’s population is 15 years old or younger. That’s a lot of children to educate. Law requires that all children complete primary school, but the government has not been able to keep up with the demand. The public schools typically have large class sizes, poor facilities and often ill-prepared teachers. Further, the schools are typically located where the population is most dense, requiring many children living in rural villages to walk one or even two hours to school.

As a result the government has sanctioned and encouraged small private schools, run in the immediate communities where the children live. These are not we in the U.S. envision when we think of private education. Though these schools’ facilities may be pretty basic, the children often receive a far superior education than those attending public schools. By funding the expansion of these small private schools with microfinance loans, Opportunity gets a double whammy. Not only do we make small business loans to school proprietors who operate self-sustaining enterprises, but more children get the opportunity to receive an education. Because of this extra value, and because of the number of people that these schools employ, Opportunity knows how important it is to make loans to these school proprietors.

Before going into the field to see the schools, our group of travelers visited the Opportunity Uganda bank in the morning for an orientation on education finance. The director of this initiative, Freda, explained that we made our first two school proprietor loans in 2008, each for about $13,000. This year we have more than 100 schools, receiving a total of $2.2 million in loans.

After the orientation we visited the Rise and Shine kindergarten and primary school. Dorothy met us at the front gate with an infectious smile and hugs for everyone. She is the school’s proud director and co-founder. In 2000, when her mother died, Dorothy converted the family home into a school for seven children, using her life savings of $250 to get it started. Later that year she borrowed $150 from Opportunity International. Successive loans have been for $200, $250 , $2,500 and most recently $4,000. With these funds she has partitioned and equipped classrooms, built a fence, and constructed toilets and running water. Today she has a team of nine teachers and 150 students, including more than 30 refugees from Sudan, Somalia and the DR Congo.

For the next half hour, the students entertained our group by singing songs they had written for “the visitors.” We so enjoyed meeting these children and seeing their school, inspired by young students who one day may be Africa’s future leaders.

Mark Lutz is Opportunity’s senior VP of global philanthropy. He recently returned from a week-long Insight Trip to  Rwanda and Uganda with a number of Opportunity supporters and staff to see firsthand the impact of our Banking on Africa campaign.

Stay tuned to the Opportunity Blog for more from the Banking on Africa travelers.

We meandered down the shopping district, winding our way through an orderly confusion of shops, street vendors and a sea of humanity. It was hot and dry and the red dust rose over the marketplace like a cloud mixing itself with the heavy smell of outdoor cooking and fumes from the boda bodas as they streaked by.

Attending this impressive, well-organized Trust Group meeting, one of the great experiences in my life.

We found our destination, which was one of two wooden covered shelters made from four tree branches and a piece of rusted tin that I am sure had its birth as part of a building. We sat on benches short for our stature.

We waited a few minutes and soon the clients filed in, taking seats and facing us with big smiles, dressed in their most colorful Sunday best. Our interpreter asked us to introduce ourselves, introductions which we delivered in rapid fire as we tried to explain in a few words our place in the world.

The Trust Group chairman opened the meeting. He was a man of 4.8 feet, dressed in green attire, missing a few teeth but laser-focused, in command of his audience, and totally in control of the meeting at hand. You could see in his weather-worn face the intuitive ability to articulate a vision and the presence to lead others. I leaned over to Kevin, a traveling companion, and said, “If they open this meeting by reading the last meeting’s minutes, I will be very impressed.” And with that, a member stood up with his 11×14 notepad of hand-written notes, and standing military straight presented the minutes of the last meeting… Everyone nodded, and then the first order of business was the monthly repayment of loans.

We proceeded to hear stories of the clients’ successes and the beaming appreciation they had for Opportunity‘s services and support. There was a woman who ran a retail banana store, a man who was a banana wholesaler, an owner of a boutique, and a few others. I sat awed, flabbergasted at the formal, Wall Street structure of this meeting. Our chairman, who began with a shoeshine stand, grew it into a retail store, and had educated seven children–three of whom were in politics and four others who had also attended the university–who beamed like the North Star as he told us his story.

Next was the discussion of old business, which began with the review of a contingency fund the clients had created to prepare for a possible default of one of their membership. Then they moved into the current operations of their boda boda messenger, which the group had funded as a new venture and a revenue source. Another member sprang to his feet to suggest that they needed to find and own their own meeting site, a real property investment, and paint it the color of the Opportunity bank. He suggested that they mandate the wearing of t-shirts in their Trust Group colors and create their own brand. He was a marketing officer who any CEO would cherish.

I was so impressed. This whole process was well-organized, carefully thought-out, executed perfectly and, given the environment and personal obstacles each of these clients face, this is an accomplishment that would have rivaled the work of a Harvard Business School graduate. You could see in their beaming faces a clear understanding of what is necessary to be successful. It’s only the “luck of the draw” of their birthplace that this group was not sitting in an office high above Madison Avenue.

To anyone who is working with Opportunity International, or planning to, you must take the time to make a trip like this in order to understand the complexities of the microfinance system, its difficulties and successes, and particular challenges of those persons who happened to be born into a society where opportunity and the entrepreneurial spirit are ill-defined, yet bursting to be released given a chance.

This was truly one of the great experiences in my life…

Insight Trip traveler Bruce of San Francisco, Calif. traveled with Opportunity supporters and staff two weeks ago in Rwanda and Uganda to see firsthand the impact of our Banking on Africa campaign.

Stay tuned to the Opportunity Blog for more from the Banking on Africa travelers.

Tanzania loan officer Thomas and Insight Trip correspondent Kelly Flanagan

We talked about some of the challenges of being a loan officer on the bus ride to a Trust Group meeting and he confided in me that he doesn’t like disappointing clients by not meeting all of their needs but tries hard to accommodate them. Thomas enjoys working with people on a daily basis in and out of the Moshi office and on the weekends he goes out dancing for fun.

This post was written by Kelly Flanagan, the winner of Opportunity’s Tanzania Correspondent Contest who traveled on the YAO Insight Trip to Tanzania earlier in August. Stay tuned to the Opportunity Blog for more travel posts from Kelly all about the Insight Trip to Tanzania. Kelly is a Multimedia Artist & Video Editor living in Phoenix, Arizona.

Dorosera Mukagahima, an Opportunity Rwanda client, is treasurer of her rural Trust Group.

Life hasn’t always been this good. She explained that a couple years ago when she joined the Trust Group her “brain was closed.” She says she was confused, with low self-esteem and without direction or hope. She lived in a grass, thatched hut where she cared for her sick husband and their four children who were all attending primary school.

Her fortunes began to change with her first Opportunity loan of only $33, which enabled her to start selling juice that she makes from bananas. Within four months she paid off her loan and took out a larger one to expand her business. By the third loan cycle, she could afford to make the mud bricks she eventually used to build her new house. Inspired by the success of the others in her group she says she’s no longer afraid to take larger loans and make investments.

Our group of travelers asked her several questions, one of them inquiring about the influence of her Trust Group on the progress of her business. She was quick to respond. Before her loan, as a woman she could not leave her home or spend time with others unless accompanied by her husband. Though those traditional practices are discouraged by the government, many rural women still live within those boundaries today.

Now she is able to be out running her business or meeting with the other Trust Group members. Seeing the added income to the family, her husband welcomes her participation. When she hears the stories from the other group members, she says, it encourages her to “think beyond where she is and what she can accomplish.” The interpersonal skills she has learned in the group, she has taken home and used in her family.

The next day as we took our long bus ride, several in our group commented on the strength, camaraderie and empowerment these Trust Group members gained from working and meeting together. Perhaps here in Rwanda the group dynamic is especially powerful, as members rebuild their lives in the wake of the genocide. Knowing that this genocide pitted neighbor against neighbor, it’s certainly possible that some family members of those in this Trust Group were victims of atrocities inflicted by other families represented in the group. Coming together every week helps brings healing and support like little else can. It is clear to all of us that microfinance is playing a significant role in the restoration of Rwanda.

Mark Lutz, our Senior VP of Global Philanthropy, wrote this post last week while traveling to Rwanda and Uganda with Opportunity supporters to see firsthand the impact of our Banking on Africa campaign. Stay tuned to the Opportunity Blog for more posts from their exciting trip.

Check out Kelly’s photos from the day:

Opportunity-US staff member Abbi with the girls in the kitchen

Opportunity Tanzania's AJ playing with a new friend

Cooking at Faraja--shredding carrots never seemed so pretty!

YAO - Chicago's Sara enjoying the company of another energetic woman

The beautiful young women of the Faraja Center in Arusha, Tanzania.

Stay tuned to the Opportunity Blog for more from Kelly and the YAO Insight Trip to Tanzania.

Tanzania Correspondent Contest winner Kelly Flanagan is a Multimedia Artist & Video Editor living in Phoenix, Arizona.

Originating near San Francisco, Philadelphia, Chicago, Los Angeles and Raleigh, our travelers certainly don’t share common back yards. What’s in common is our desire to meet some of the neighbors in our global village; those who not only survive economically but thrive spiritually on a few dollars a day. How do they do it, and what can we learn about life from them?

My book UnPoverty: Rich Lessons from the Working Poor is a smorgasbord of stories about amazing people I’ve met on previous trips like this, and what they teach me. Now on this voyage our group will journal our thoughts and present them here for everyone to read. We plan to share blog posts, videos, candid shots, and most of all our immediate and honest impressions.

We encourage you to pack your virtual bag and join us for the week. We’ll be sharing many of our posts right here, on the Opportunity Blog. Let us know what you like or challenge our reactions in the comment field below. We’ll have plenty of time bouncing around in the back of a bus to discuss your response and possibly even respond back to you. We’re all going with slightly different agendas, but with a common goal to be inspired by and learn from those we visit. Who really is “poor” and why? And how can we live in community with them? Thank you for joining us.

Bon voyage.

This post was written by Mark Lutz, Banking on Africa Insight Trip traveler & senior vice-president of Global Philanthropy at Opportunity International.