An example of an Opportunity POS device used in a shop

The plan for kiosk satellite branches brought new lessons and challenges for OISL, one of Opportunity’s microfinance institutions in Ghana. With cash transactions, they found that the structure of the bank does matter to clients. Clients report feeling more reassured when handing over their hard-earned cash at an actual bank branch, as opposed to a smaller, less permanent-looking kiosk. OISL made an operational decision to try a different approach and they continued to look for new, economically sound ways of reaching deeper into communities. The results are taking OISL down a new path.

OISL has begun developing more local business partnerships to utilize the resources that are already reaching their current and potential clients across the country. At the end of 2011, OISL began enrolling local merchants as “OISL agents” by supplying them with POS devices, so that clients can transact business with OISL while in their shops. Under this model, a client is able to add electronic money to their mobile phones, withdraw cash and make loan repayments right in their local bakery, cell phone accessory shop or grocery store.

A typical cell phone used to make financial transactions, including loan repayments via text message

Today, OISL has 25 POS devices deployed in retail shops in the western, eastern, Brong Ahafo, and Greater Accra regions of Ghana, and is establishing partnerships with more merchants in this upcoming year. OISL’s other service delivery channels include 29 branches, three traveling mobile vans, and two Community Banking Centers, which are premises where clients meet with loan officers. Not only this, but OISL clients can make financial transactions in an unlimited number of locations simply by using their mobile phones. OISL partners with the local mobile phone service provider MTN, which allows clients to keep their money electronically and make various types of transactions. Using their cell phones, clients can pay bills or transfer money to relatives and friends using text messaging. At participating retail shops, the MobileMoney service allows clients to load money onto their phones, withdraw their mobile money as cash, or purchase products and services in that store. In 2011, OISL rolled out MTN’s MobileMoney solution at all of its branches and plans to begin partnering with other mobile phone service providers in this upcoming year.

Cocoa farmer Beatrice Boaten (left) at a mobile banking van in Kumasi, Ghana, with her loan officer Abena Sarpong

These types of partnerships with retail merchants and cell phone service providers are cost-effective and allow OISL the ability to expand to new areas as never before. For Opportunity Ghana, the year 2012 started off well and 2013 looks bright indeed. We look forward to seeing what new innovations the new year has in store.

Dana Lunberry is a program manager based in Opportunity’s US headquarters. She manages and reports on our work in Ghana and eight other countries in which we operate.

Effie Cooke, Opportunity’s head of human resources in Africa, brings a special message from Ghana in a joyful video below. We hope it brings you inspiration today and in the days to come.

Merry Christmas and Afishapa from Ghana!

Christmas Greetings from Ghana:

Christmas Greetings from Ghana from Opportunity International on Vimeo.

Patience is a community organizer in the Ablekuma South area of Chorkor, a small fishing community on the south side of Accra, Ghana, where she works with over 300 women. “As a woman organizer,” she explains, “you take care of the needs and organize all the women in the community. Once I decided to take this role, their concerns became my concerns. People are normally not well regarded if they don’t have a business, but there is a saying that ‘what a man can do a woman can also do,’ so I have been encouraging them to be responsible for themselves.”

She has also helped other women start small businesses. “I want to make sure everyone is equal,” she says. “Now, these women have their own money, their own businesses, and as a result they have earned the respect of the people. I’m happy. I will continue to help them and even do more for them than I am doing now.”

In families where women have an income, they have a voice in financial decisions, resulting in better nutrition, health and education for children. Studies show that women will spend 90% of their income to support the family as opposed to the 35% spent by men. When family needs are met, women are more likely to invest in their communities. According to the Half the Sky Movement, an Opportunity International partner, when women have the skills to participate in public life, government corruption declines.

Join us today to help ensure all people have the basic human right to have a voice in their own political, social and economic lives.

Hear more of Patience’s story and how she helps hundreds of local women find their voice:

Patience from Opportunity International on Vimeo.

Ahobrase Academy began in 1998 as a small nursery in Comfort’s home. Comfort realized that the children in her neighborhood loitered and never attended classes, so she wanted to provide a place for them to learn. In the beginning, it was difficult. She had to go out into the community and bring these children, some without clothes or shoes, into her home for lessons and food. She would bathe, clothe and feed them. The next day, the children would either return naked again or they would not come back at all. After a while, a friend advised her to remove the clothes and slippers and send them home as they had arrived. This worked like magic — the children came back every day. Gradually, as the number of students grew, Comfort thought of ways to expand since Ahobrase was outgrowing her small porch.

In 2009, upon a friend’s advice, Comfort turned to Opportunity for a school proprietor loan that would provide capital to purchase a building and expand the school. Today, Ahobrase Academy serves more than 700 students from pre-school to junior high school with an education previously unavailable in their neighborhood. The school is a source of jobs, with 38 academic and non-teaching staff.

Comfort’s dream is to complete the expansion of her school and to buy a larger school bus. She’s proud of the education that she and her husband are now able to give the local children.

If you’d like to invest in educating children, we invite you to partner with us. Help provide school fee loans to parents so that they can send their children to school, and school loans to proprietors like Comfort so that they can expand and improve their school buildings and facilities. Invest in education today »

1. City A.M.‘s Appeal for Opportunity, Backed by the Citi Foundation

In a recent City A.M. article, Citigroup’s global director of microfinance, Bob Annibale, explained why the Citi Foundation supports the City A.M. Christmas Appeal to raise funds for Opportunity International’s life-changing work in Africa.

Opportunity client Patience Dameh sells fabric out of one of the most vibrant stalls in the Kasseh Market in Ada, Ghana.

“I’m most focused on organizations that are impacting communities through provision of financial services and support for entrepreneurship,” Annibale said. “There are some fantastic examples, including Opportunity International – the level of sophistication of the technology it is using is first rate. Not only bringing electronic payments to people, but also using biometric technology to securely create a ‘financial identity’ for clients who may not have identity documents.”The appeal has raised $433,062 [£269,330] since its launch, and every donation will be matched by the British government.

How to Give:

Give online at www.cityam.com/appeal. Or donate by texting CITY13 and the amount (£5 or £10, the equivalent of $8 or $16) to 70070.

Then, use social media to tell the world why you donated. Tweet #cityamappeal. These comments may be printed in City A.M.

2. Invest in One Woman, Empower Many

1.5 billion people worldwide live in extreme poverty. Many are women entrepreneurs with a plan to help themselves, their families and their communities. Through Opportunity International’s One Woman Holiday Challenge, start an online fundraiser or make a donation to an existing fundraiser. Every $150=one woman empowered with a loan that helps her grow her business so that she can support her family, send her children to school and employ her neighbors. She will be able to work her way out of chronic poverty. When you give, you will be investing in better futures, one woman at a time.

Thanks to generous donors, every dollar donated will be matched 1 to 1 up to $450,000. Your donation of any size makes a difference. Donate now and you will DOUBLE YOUR IMPACT.

Learn more, make a donation and empower a woman to have a better life at opportunity.org/woman »

3. The Gift Card of Opportunity

This is more than a gift card, it’s the gift of Opportunity. This year, give your friends, family and co-workers an Opportunity Gift Card and you will be bringing hope and opportunity to families around the world. Your friends can use their gift cards to empower some of the millions of clients who use Opportunity International loans and financial services to grow their businesses, employ their neighbors, feed their children and strengthen their communities.

Make this the year that you give your list the gift of opportunity. Purchase Opportunity Gift Cards for $10 or more at opportunity.org/giftcard »

Opportunity Gift Cards starting at $10, available at opportunity.org/giftcard »

Patience Dameh in her Kasseh Market fabric stall

This holiday season, as you hunt for the perfect gift, consider giving friends, family and co-workers an Opportunity Gift Card to bring hope and opportunity to clients like Patience Dameh of Ghana (right). Your friends can use Opportunity Gift Cards to empower some of the millions of clients around the world like Patience who use Opportunity International loans and financial services to grow their businesses, employ their neighbors and feed their children. 

Patience Dameh owns of one of the most vibrant stalls in Ada’s Kasseh Market, featuring hundreds of traditional Ghanaian fabrics. She also owns a grocery store called “With God All Things Are Possible” in the next village over, where she and her three children live. When Patience became an Opportunity client in 2011, she used her loan to expand her store, buy more goods in bulk at a better price, and increase her monthly income and savings. Today, she employs several people from her community, including her adult son. With her second loan, Patience hopes to build and rent stores to other traders. She dreams of the day when Opportunity Ghana will lease space from her to open a bank branch in her community.

Patience is one of the more than four million clients worldwide who use Opportunity’s microfinance services, including access to savings, loans, insurance and training, to expand businesses, provide for their families, create jobs for their neighbors, and build a safety net for the future. You can empower clients like Patience to create change in their lives. Visit opportunity.org/giftcard to buy Opportunity Gift Cards. For bulk orders of 100 or more, we’ll customize card packaging with branding or a logo. For questions about gift cards or bulk orders, contact support@opportunity.org.

Make this the year you give your list the gift of opportunity.

Opportunity Gift Cards at opportunity.org/giftcard »

This July , five years after its inception, MicroEnsure Ghana achieved one of its greatest successes: it crossed the milestone of insuring one million Ghanaians, a remarkable achievement considering it was serving just 40,000 lives in 2010.

James Aby Kwame Prah, a MicroEnsure Ghana client, shows the water level in his Accra shop after last year’s floods. MicroEnsure’s insurance is helping him rebuild his shop.

Beginning operations in 2007, MicroEnsure Ghana has held its place as Ghana’s first and largest microinsurance intermediary. Currently, 94.6% of Ghanaians, over 23 million people, have no insurance coverage. With one third of the population living on less than $2 a day, there is an acute need for protection from life’s risks, something that microinsurance provides for this segment of the population.

MicroEnsure has provided this protection through steadily expanding its coverage in Ghana. As MicroEnsure Ghana has effectively responded to the great need for, and untapped potential of microinsurance in Ghana, it has established its position as the fastest growing insurance intermediary in West Africa.

Crucial to MicroEnsure’s growth in Ghana are its innovative products and successful partnerships. MicroEnsure Ghana has partnered with mobile phone companies and microfinance institutions to create innovative products that have made this impressive growth possible:

• Tigo Family Care Insurance is a product that provides free life insurance to Tigo subscribers based on their Tigo airtime usage each month. As more Tigo airtime is used, more life insurance is earned, up to a maximum of US$500. Policyholders have had the option of enrolling in Xtra-Life, paying just $0.50 a month to double their insurance benefits.
• The Obra Pa product combines credit life, funeral, property, permanent disability insurance and credit health (hospitalization cover) into one package policy covering borrowers and insured family members during their loan terms, all for an affordable one-off premium paid at the beginning of the loan term.
• The savings-linked insurance account is a product that provides insurance incentives for bank savings. From minimum deposits as low as $25 saved in an account, free life insurance is earned; the more a depositor saves, the more insurance earned, up to a maximum of $1,000 plus interest.

In a country where more than nine out of 10 Ghanaians live without the benefits of insurance, reaching one million lives in Ghana in just five years of operations is a huge step forward. As Christina Doe, the Business Innovations Officer for MicroEnsure Ghana explains, “As more Ghanaians are covered by and experience the benefits of insurance, the more they will become sensitized about insurance, to the extent that when the covered poor face life’s risks, the impact of those risks will be low due to the safety net provided by insurance. MicroEnsure Ghana has reached one million lives. Get ready for the next million!”

George Owusu Asare and students of the King George International School in Ashaiman

Last Friday, I visited King George International School in a crowded market in one of the most impoverished neighborhoods of Ashaiman, a city in southeastern Ghana. Yesterday, I returned to the school with Vicki so that she could meet the students and the school proprietor, George Owusu Asare.

Everywhere that Vicki and I have been in Ghana, we were greeted with hugs and huge smiles, but never more so than at the schools we visited, including King George. We climbed out of the van to the beat of drums accompanying several girl students who performed an impressive cultural dance. Then we popped our heads into several classrooms to say “hello” and one of the classes chanted the names of all the regions and capitals of Ghana in the local language. We were really amazed by one little girl who was intent on copying the alphabet in her notebook, and looked up only once while this was going on around her.

Student dancers greeted us at King George School!

George Owusu Asare opened King George in 2002 when he saw that the neighborhood desperately needed to provide the local children with the chance to get a quality education. He started the school with two boys and one teacher in a rented wooden structure. Today, the school serves 300 pupils in 10 classrooms and consists of nursery, primary and junior high schools. It also offers a school lunch program to children for only 25 cents per meal. All five of Asare’s children (ranging in age from five months to 11 years) attend the school, and his wife, Margaret, runs the kitchen.

King George School’s proprietor, George Owusu Asare, with his wife, Margaret, and their five children–Pious (7), Harriett (11), Antoinette (9), Nathaniel (3), and Christiana (5 months)–who all attend the school.

Asare took out his first Opportunity school proprietor loan in 2007 and has been using his loans since then to build more classrooms and recruit more teachers. “Opportunity has helped me buy building materials to expand my school,” he says, “and my loan officer gives me lots of good advice.”

Vicki and I had a hard time leaving the children we met at King George, but what we saw just reinforced why Opportunity is determined to help raise up private schools in neighborhoods where government schools are few and lagging far behind. Vicki and I both enjoyed seeing how George is growing and improving the school with his education finance loans, making a better future for the local children.

For more from Vicki’s visit to Ghana, stay tuned to the blog, social media and more.

I’ve been on the other side of the spectrum, fundraising for Opportunity’s transformative work in Ghana and other countries for close to five years now, and it is a great joy to be where I am now. I have an exclusive view that is very rare: I’ve been the hands and feet of Opportunity in Africa and the voice for Opportunity here in the States. I count myself privileged!
On both sides, I see a shared need, purpose, dignity, dream and heart–the generous donor in the States expresses a deep passion and an obligation to give what he or she has–to reach a client in Agbogloshie, Ghana, for instance, even if they can’t pronounce the name of the place or may never see that individual client. They do this because they want to give of their hearts. As one supporter told me, “We are so blessed here in the States that it is not right for us to see people suffer.”

The most obvious evidence of transformation resulting from Opportunity’s work is in its effects on clients’ daily lives. A mother delights in the fact that she is able to put her child through school, a father can rest assured that his maize farm is insured against total loss, and children can be glad that they can count on their next meal each day.

As employees of Opportunity International, we too experience transformation! In the past year or two, I have witnessed significant staff transformation at Opportunity Ghana under the leadership of CEO Cosmus Kowuoche. It is great to reward staff for their hard work but it is greater and even more heartwarming to trust the talents and capabilities of staff so much that they are placed in positions of great responsibility. This is what Cosmus has brought to Opportunity Ghana.

Opportunity Ghana has seen the growth and use of internal talents and skills, a sure testament to the value the organization places on growing leadership from within. Two noteworthy, internal leaps into leadership positions are those of Kwame Owusu Boateng, Deputy CEO, and Samuel Afful, chief financial officer.

Kwame joined Opportunity in 2006 as a Branch Operations Officer, and has grown through the ranks to become the Deputy CEO in 2012. This is a great transformation story for me because as I mentioned, I have a rare advantage of being on both sides of the spectrum. When I emailed Kwame to congratulate him, his reply was in sync with the feeling I had when I heard of his promotion. He said, “We give God the glory for what He has done with the team in Ghana under the leadership of Cosmus and for all to believe that we can handle the affairs of the company going forward.”

Samuel, with whom I served as a volunteer leader on the staff welfare team, joined Opportunity Ghana in 2005 as an audit officer. He has risen through the ranks to the high office of CFO. I called to congratulate Sammy, as he’s affectionately called, and in a grateful tone he said, “You know, my philosophy has always been that it is great to combine integrity and competence in everything I do. I am so glad that the leadership of the company could trust me with this high office and I know I will not disappoint.”

The mission of Opportunity International is great, and it’s a joy to know that everyone in our global family is a sure candidate for transformation!

Michael Okleme is a fundraiser, and Manager of the Opportunity Partners Program. He’s originally from Somanya, in the eastern region of Ghana, and now lives in suburban Chicago. As we write this, our CEO Vicki Escarra is in Ghana this week visiting the Accra and Ashaiman branches, local schools to see our education finance program at work, and rural areas to meet our agricultural finance clients.

Cocoa farmer Beatrice Boaten (left) and her loan officer Abena Sarpong at an Opportunity Ghana mobile bank in the Ashanti region.

With the addition of a new van in Ghana, Opportunity’s mobile fleet is 23 vehicles. Each mobile “bank-on-wheels” has the capacity to serve between 1,800 and 5,000 clients in rural villages. Uganda and Mozambique plan to add additional vans to their fleet soon. Mobile routes and schedules are planned around local market days to allow more families to take advantage of loans, training, savings and insurance products through these vans. Strategic stops allow clients to save time and travel costs by bringing the bank to their doorsteps, neighborhoods and marketplaces.

The vans empower rural families and farmers like Beatrice Boaten by providing them the peace of mind of having a safe place to deposit the day’s earnings. Beatrice has accrued $30 in savings, that is now safe from being lost or stolen–plus, it’s easily accessible during regular stops near her farm in the Ashanti region of Ghana. Though the vans face spiking fuel and maintenance costs, we know how critical they are to bring these services to our clients, so we’re determined to support them.