Photos, from top: Client Godfrey Lutwama in the Kalerwe Market in Kampala, Uganda; Mobile bank in Uganda (Credit: Oliver Krato); Client Deepa (right) with tiffin boxes, India; An unexpected observer in Cartagena, Colombia; Son of groundnut farming client Edward Yohane, Malawi; Fishermen in Maputo, Mozambique.

David Santoso is our Online Community Specialist, in charge of our pages on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and more. Stay tuned to the Opportunity Blog for more photos, posts and updates from David.

Watch the live video stream of Summit plenary sessions, as well as the closing ceremony on Thursday, Nov. 17.

Follow the events of the conference on the Microcredit Summit Campaign’s Facebook page and on Twitter @MicroCredSummit at hashtag #2011MCSummit.

Richard Leftley’s workshop session, entitled “What Have We Learned about the Most Effective Ways to Use Micro-Insurance to Reduce Vulnerability: Health, Life, Disaster and More,” will reflect on the lessons Opportunity has learned in delivering microinsurance to millions of people in nine countries. The panel is chaired by Marten Leijon, Executive Director, Microfinance Information Exchange (MIX), USA, and features: Craig Churchill, Social Finance Programme, International Labour Organization (ILO), Switzerland; Anne Hastings, CEO, Fonkoze Financial Services, Haiti; Pompy Sridhar, Vice President – Programme, ICICI Foundation for Inclusive Growth, India; and Thérèse Sandmark, Agricultural Microinsurance Officer, Grameen Crédit Acrigole Microfinance Foundation, France.

Watch this big annual event unfold in social media and in live video coverage, and join the conversation at #2011MCSummit as experts address some of the most crucial challenges facing the industry today.

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.

Elizabeth Mensah is a client of Opportunity International. We visited her chop bar as part of our visit to a Trust Group meeting of which she is a member. In these photos, the employees of Elizabeth Mensah’s chop Bar preparepalm soup to serve along with fufu to its customers.

To view the original post on the SOW Boston blog, click here.

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.

Now It’s Your Turn

This is your chance to vote and help us pick the winners. Read entries submitted by the top 10 finalists listed below and cast your vote at opportunity.org/contest. Click on the button that says ‘Vote Now’ and vote for the person who you think would be the best multimedia reporter for Opportunity in Tanzania.

Cast your vote between 12:01 a.m. CDT on May 14 and 11:59 p.m. CDT on May 25, 2011.  First, second and third place winners will be announced on or about May 27, 2011. See official rules.

Contest Finalists:

1. Michael Camp – “Women Take Credit Where Credit is Due”
2. Joel Carlman – “The Power of ‘Typical’”
3. Jessica Cushman – “Let the Voices Ring Loud”
4. Kelly Flanagan – “Working Women”
5. Laura Gamse – “Real as a wish in a well”
6. Carina Ho – “This Tanzanian Life”
7. Clara Lipson – “Realizing Dreams: Women and Microfinance in Tanzania”
8. Laurie Moy – “Through a Child’s Eyes”
9. Petra - “In your shoes”
10. Francisco Roliz - “Opportunity Changes Destiny”

Thank you for helping us find the best correspondent to share the story of our Tanzanian women clients. Cast your vote for one of our top 10 at opportunity.org/contest »

Flora Mgombewa is a graduate of the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Women Emerging Leaders Program and works for Opportunity Tanzania. Of the Emerging Leaders Program, Flora says, “I received training here to go out and improve what I was doing before. I’m going to teach [my clients] how to save.”

Would you like to meet Tanzanian staff like Flora in person? Enter for the chance to win a spot on the YAO Insight Trip to Tanzania this summer at opportunity.org/contest or find out more at opportunity.org/banking-on-women.

Click here to enter our contest to win a spot on the Insight Trip to Tanzania.

Enter now through May 11, 2011 for a chance to win a spot on Opportunity International’s Insight Trip to Tanzania in August. You’ll become our multimedia reporter on the ground and experience firsthand how Opportunity’s microfinance initiatives help our clients create change in their lives.

To enter, visit www.opportunity.org/contest and answer the following in 100 words or less:

Tell us what your approach would be to capturing the stories of our women microfinance clients, and illustrating how they’ve worked hard to change their lives, their families, and their communities. Explain what methods you would use (photography, video, writing, other) to produce multimedia reports that can be shared with Opportunity’s online community of supporters.

Click here to enter the contest »

Contest Details

Opens: Wednesday, April 13
Contest Deadline: 11:59 p.m. CDT on Wednesday, May 11
Participant Requirements: This contest is open to US residents 21 years and older.
For complete contest rules and restrictions visit http://www.opportunity.org/contest

So, how can you help?

Jump for Opportunity

There’s still time to donate to one of the Jumpers’ fundraisers on optinnow.org. Go to jumpforopportunity.com and click on a Jumper’s photo to get started. Give to Bert’s “Super Poverty Punchout,” “Sarah is Jumping Create Opportunity” and more. Help them reach their $100,000 goal to alleviate poverty in Tanzania.

Good news travels fast

Read about Jump for Opportunity on the Wall Street Journal's blog.

Jump for Opportunity has been getting a lot of buzz lately! Today, news of the Jump appeared in the Wall Street Journal‘s blog. Show your support for the Jumpers by clicking ‘Like’ on the article page. Plus, there have been profiles of Jumpers and articles in local media like The Ada Herald in Ohio, The Cary News in N.C., NJ.com in New Jersey and more.

This weekend, jump alongside the entrepreneurs facing their fears to fight global poverty. Follow @jump4opp on Twitter and ‘Like’ Jump for Opportunity on Facebook to stay up to date on all the news from the Jump.

Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg interviews Bill Gates at the World Economic Forum on Jan. 28, 2011. Gates answers viewer questions and addresses the global need for expansive immunization, advanced agricultural techniques and the importance of traveling to see firsthand the needs of the developing world. For this and more, click the screenshot above to watch the video.

For more video interviews from WEF 2011, visit livestream.com/worldeconomicforum02.