A typical cell phone used for banking

We utilize cell phone banking, satellite bank branches, ATMs and point-of-sale (POS) devices provide low-cost, secure banking to formerly excluded clients. We are establishing points of access within one kilometer (about two miles) of a client’s home or business. We are migrating to cloud-based systems and developing of a new generation of skilled IT leaders to continue these innovations.

The Power of Technology

Marie-Claire Ina opens an account in Kinshasa, DR Congo

Marie-Claire Ina (left) opens a biometric-based account at Opportunity International’s bank in Democratic Republic of Congo. With support from the UN Capital Development Fund (UNCDF), this is one of only a few places in the developing world offering this powerful technology. It requires only a fingerprint-embedded ID card to access an account. Even those who are illiterate or lack formal identification have control over their finances and a recognition many have never known.

Annie Nyangomba at Opportunity DR Congo

Annie Nyangomba (right) holds out her finger to be read. She also is opening an account at the Kinshasa branch of Opportunity DR Congo. Annie says she was reluctant to open a bank account before because she thought it would be too expensive. But now that she has the structure of a bank account, she feels more secure and recognized. “Now I get more respect,”Annie tells us, “and I hope to see my social life change. I feel more secure for the future of my children.”

Gaining Access: Cell Phone Banking

Felicitus Mmboge in her Nairobi, Kenya shop

In Nairobi, Kenya, Felicitus Mmboge (left) uses her cell phone to save and transfer money, pay for goods, and accept payments in her beauty products business. She even receives and repays her Opportunity loans with her cell phone. Cell phone banking allows her to make these transactions without having to shutter her shop to visit a bank branch, saving her travel expenses and lost income.

Financial tools like cell phone banking, satellite bank branches, ATMs and point-of-sale devices strengthen communities. They increase security and keep Opportunity International’s clients close to their homes and businesses. Whether in rural villages or sprawling city markets, our clients have safe, affordable, reliable and convenient access to their accounts so they can keep their businesses open and avoid costly travel to the bank.

Invest in Opportunity’s technology solutions »

Felicitus Mmboge working in her Nairobi shop

Twenty years ago, at the age of 22, Felicitus left her struggling village in Western Kenya and took a job as a maid in Nairobi so she could send money back to her family. Each week, she put a little money aside until she had enough to buy a few beauty products to sell in the street. When her employer passed away, she received severance pay, which enabled her to rent a shop and start her own beauty product business. Soon thereafter, robbers broke in and stole everything. Luckily, she had money in her M-PESA account on her mobile phone so she could start her business again.

In 2010, Opportunity invested in Felicitus with a loan of $290 to buy stock for her shop. A second loan of $600 empowered her to offer more products and to purchase hens for a secondary income stream. Her husband works as a gardener and carpenter, but most of the family’s income is from her businesses.

Felicitus and her Opportunity Kenya loan officer, Annie Wanjero

Felicitus uses her cell phone as a bank, which saves her time and money on travel. She transfers money, pays for goods, accepts payments, and even receives and repays her Opportunity loans — all while still attending to her shop. “Because I can also save money on my phone, it means I don’t have as much cash in my house or business, so I’m not worried about having it stolen.”

Felicitus keeps her money safe and secure, and her business is a success.

With her increased earnings, Felicitus is able to pay school fees for her three children and an orphaned niece. “I am determined that all of my children get a good education,” she says. “I feel very blessed that I have been able to set up my own business.”

She adds, “I want to become a distributor to other beauty shops, and I feel this is now possible with Opportunity and the guidance of my loan officer, Annie Wanjero.”

When you invest in one woman like Felicitus, you empower many. Invest in women like Felicitus today.

Opportunity champion Felicitus Mmboge has worked hard to grow a successful business, Grace Hair and Beauty Products, in Nairobi, Kenya.

We root for teams, our countrymen and -women, to win and bring home the gold. We smile when the cameras focus on the ecstatic families in the stands cheering and dancing and crying and shouting and hugging all at once. If you’re a sap like me, at moments like that you may even shed a tear or two. Because as powerful as it is for us at home to see an athlete accomplish that Olympic victory, it is so much more meaningful for the supporters who have been with them every step of the way, who intimately know their background story. The athletes may be members of Team USA or Jamaica or Japan during that incredible 17-day experience, but you can bet that each and every one of them has a team–in the stands and at home–rooting for them, medal or not.

That support team is what Opportunity is for so many clients, our champions in places like Kenya, Colombia, the Philippines, and many more. Our champions may never stand on a podium for a medal ceremony or appear on international TV, but their stories of perseverance would blow those of many Olympians out of the water. They have dreams too; not of besting world records, but of affording a home with a real floor and roof, or sending their kids to school, or opening their own business and contributing to their community.

Felicitus’s “coach,” her loan officer Annie Wanjero, guides her and helps her reach her goals.

Our champions are also members of teams, Trust Groups, collections of people who support and teach each other, who have their teammates’ backs should misfortune fall. The loan officers, branch managers, and local Opportunity leadership are these teams’ coaches, always available to give guidance and extra support to their champions. And then there’s the home “nation”–all of the Opportunity family-at-large–made up of international staff, donors, Insight Trip travelers, YAO members, even interns (!)–who are there to cheer on the champions as they stick every landing, flip every turn, jump every hurdle, and pass every ball with passion and grace.

Olympians show pride for the countries they represent. Just so, our clients are shining representatives of Team Opportunity. The whole network– individuals, teams, coaches and nation–comes together with a mission for success for each of these champions who put themselves on the line and give 100% every day.

So when you find yourself leaping off of your couch and screaming at your TV over the next two weeks, remember the other champions that are out there giving their all and succeeding thanks largely to your support. Because that’s the best part about our “Games”: you too can play a crucial role in the making of a champion.

This post was written by Elise Egan. She’s the intern in Opportunity’s International Education department, an avid cyclist, and a big fan of metaphors.

Betty Mutua from Opportunity International on Vimeo.

Today on Mother’s Day, honor the mothers and women in your life who work hard for their families, and do it with endless poise and grace. Create tribute patches to them on the Global Opportunity Quilt at opportunity.org/honormom. Your gifts will make an impact on the lives of Opportunity’s women clients all over the world who work hard to provide for their families.

In addition, right now, your gift has double the impact thanks to the generosity of some special contributors. For every gift card purchased, the amount will be matched dollar-for-dollar to help spread more joy, fund more loans, and create lasting change in the world.

For more information, visit opportunity.org/giftcard.

Highlights from Connie Nielsen’s Presentation

I was in a film called Lost in Africa. The premise of the film was that my adopted Kenyan son was lost without his cell phone and without his family, and so his isolation put him in danger. There are lot of children like this in Kibera, Kenya. This community of people founded our Human Needs Project. I was introduced to the way of life in these slums, a group of people who had no access to infrastructure. But this does not even begin to cover it. There is no running water, there is nothing. There are high mortality rates and low productivity rates. It becomes a prison. Human Needs Project operates from understanding that poverty is a prison but it is a prison that we can break out of.

William, my guide in Kibera, said that I could build a well. But the truth is, I realized that we could invest in putting in a well but within a few years, it would not be working anymore, and it’s the same with many businesses in the informal sector. Why is that? It’s because they are simply not set up to be sustainable. So we had to change our tack.

I imagine that acting involves empathy. That is what I do when I create a character. I have empathy for them, I try to understand their lives. And that same approach can be taken to community development. I met the people in Kibera, and I realized that we all have a lot in common.

When we’re talking about finding solutions to the problems the people face, we’re talking about infrastructure. We at HNP have seen a lot of organizations that come in to donate money. But what the Kiberans need is to own these projects. They are consumers and they want to pay for the services they use, if the services are good enough.

We have summoned innovative technologies and clean technologies to create clean water and a waste treatment system, because Kiberan systems are not hooked up to Nairobi’s services, which are themselves spotty and unreliable at times.

HNP has also implemented educational and training services. We believe that all these services will be the tipping point to enable a woman to change her life. We believe that this will be the method by which women will not only survive but be hopeful about their futures. This is why we call our work development not aid.

We asked the women what they would like to do with their lives. We got a lot of answers and we’ve incorporated them into our work. We’ve created a group of clean technology marketplace entrepreneurs and clean technology upgrades for homes at bottom-of-the-pyramid prices. We are implementing these changes with the community, and in the end, they know that it’s for the community.

A bit about Connie Nielsen

Connie Nielsen was born and raised in Denmark, and is best known for her portrayal of Princess Lucilla opposite Russell Crowe’s Maximus in the Academy Award-winning “Gladiator” (2000). Connie serves as a founding member of the Human Needs Project and Road to Freedom Scholarships in the Kibera slums of Nairobi, Kenya. As a board member of the Corporate Social Responsibility Fund in Denmark, she was a presenter at the “CSR Awards Show 2011” in September, interviewing Al Gore. In addition to being an accomplished actress, Nielsen is a trained singer, dancer and is fluent in English, German, Danish, Swedish, French and Italian.

Don’t miss your chance to meet expert international staff member Geoffrey at Opportunity’s conference. He’ll be speaking at several sessions, including two of our breakout sessions, “Fighting Poverty with Technology” and “Banking on Education.” For more on the conference and to register, go to opportunity.org/conference.

Geoffrey Thige invites you to the fall 2011 conference:

Wangari Muta Maathai accepts the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004. (Photo credit: Ricardo Medina/greenbeltmovement.org)

She did not seem to rate the contrasting rooms or the people in them of greater or lesser importance. Her gravity not only drew both rooms to her, it served to keep everyone in them grounded—kneeling in the dirt, serving alongside those in poverty.

On Sunday night, September 25, Professor Wangari Muta Maathai lost her long battle with cancer at the age of 71. The author, former member of Kenya’s Parliament, and founder of The Green Belt Movement was a great champion of issues of social justice, democracy and environmental responsibility. She was born in 1940 in the village of Ihithe, near Nyeri, in the Central Highlands of Kenya and, at a time when few girls received a formal education, her brother encouraged her to go to school. Maathai went on to become the first woman to earn a doctorate in East Africa—in 1971 from the University of Nairobi, where she later was an associate professor in the department of veterinary anatomy—and she also earned degrees from Mount St. Scholastica College in Atchison, Kansas and the University of Pittsburgh.

Professor Maathai won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004 for her contribution to sustainable development, democracy and peace. Through her work with women living in rural Kenya, Professor Maathai drew attention to the links between environmental degradation and poverty. She encouraged Kenyan women to begin planting trees to stabilize the soil and improve watersheds as well as to provide wood for cooking and fodder for livestock. This work became the Green Belt Movement (GBM) which has mobilized hundreds of thousands of women and men to plant more than 47 million trees, a first step in empowering communities to govern their resources and improve the lives of those in poverty.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu paid tribute to Maathai on greenbeltmovement.org, saying, “Wangari Maathai understood and acted on the inextricable links between poverty, rights and environmental sustainability. One can but marvel at her foresight and the scope of her success. She was a true African heroine. Our condolences go to Professor Maathai’s family, to the people of Kenya, and to the countless women (and men) across Africa and the world to whom she was an inspiration.”

Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga said, “We all knew her as a voice of reason, a lady who stood above our artificial divisions of race, tribe and region and championed the cause of humanity.”

The New York Times reported that Vertistine Mbaya, a long-time friend and fellow professor at the University of Nairobi, said that Maathai showed the world how important it is to have and demonstrate courage. ”The values she had for justice and civil liberties and what she believed were the obligations of civil society and government,” Mbaya said. “She also demonstrated the importance of recognizing the contributions that women can make and allowing them the open space to do so.”

We have lost a great champion. May we be found worthy of her example: humbly yet relentlessly living our lives in the service of others.

View commemorative photos of Professor Maathai at UK’s The Guardian. Express your condolences and view the tributes of international figures at greenbeltmovement.org.

Monday’s oil pipeline fire occurred at the Sinai Lunga Lunga slums in Nairobi, home to thousands of low-income workers employed in the city’s industrial section. Though the exact cause is still being investigated, it is suspected that a pipeline may have burst, spilling oil into the drainage system, and the fire could have resulted from a cigarette discarded into the underground drainage. Media outlets have called it the worst fire disaster since January 2009.

“So far we have 300 families which were affected by the disaster and we organized for the evacuation of these victims to three social halls within the city,” said Kenya’s Permanent Secretary of Special Programmes Andrew Mondoh.

According to authorities, it is women, young people and those living in extreme poverty who have been most affected by the fire tragedy. Member of Parliament Eugene Wamalwa urged leaders to do all they can to empower the youth so that they can support themselves. Wamalwa also stated that the calamity took place because of the people’s extreme poverty, which led them to siphon fuel to earn a living. Reports said some slum residents rushed to collect fuel leaking from the pipe into an open sewer before the explosion.

At Opportunity International, we have been following the tragedy very closely, keeping all of the people of Nairobi in our thoughts and prayers. Our local staff members appear to be safe but we are still receiving details about many of our Kenyan clients. As we mourn with the Kenyan people, it is tragedies like this that remind us why we are committed to protecting the most vulnerable people living in extreme poverty all over the world. Even in the face of devastating loss, our clients can use financial services and insurance products to rebuild their lives, protecting them from slipping even deeper into poverty following a tragedy.

If you would like to make a donation to Opportunity to support the sustainable solution of microfinance, please click here. Please continue to keep all the victims of this terrible tragedy in your prayers.