Augustine Adjei Bonnah teaches English to grade 4 students. Bonnah, who has been working at the school for five years, is the school's creative arts teacher for all grade levels.

Supreme David Educational Complex is situated in Buoho, outside of Kumasi, in the Ashanti Region of Ghana. Several years ago, Buoho resident David Asenso noticed that parents in his community had to travel long distances in order to take their children to school because the area lacked a neighborhood school. Due to the time and cost of travel, most parents could not send their children to school at all, which meant that not only were the local children not receiving an education but they were sometimes left unattended during the day. So in 2006, Asenso decided to start a school in his house so that these children could study. When the school opened it had six students–four girls and two boys–who were all in nursery. This year, three of those six original students will be entering primary school
grade 5.

Initially, Asenso offered free tuition to his students as well. They only had to pay canteen fees of 20 pesewas daily, which sometimes made it difficult for David to pay his teachers but it encouraged parents to send their children there. At one point, to save costs, David  had to work two positions in his school–as the proprietor and as a teacher! He advertised by going door-to-door and taught children poems to recite when they went home, which made the parents proud. As his enrollment increased, he did not have enough classrooms and the wooden classrooms he did have were not appealing to the parents, so many of them took their children out of the school because of the environment. Until IDP Rising Schools (IDPRS) Program came in to support him with a loan to refurbish his school’s infrastructure. Before joining with the IDPRS Program, the school offered grade levels creche through primary 2. Today, it enrolls 130 pupils and has added primary grade 5 this September for the opening of the new academic year.

Post-renovation, the school now features cement block walls and other amenities.

Asenso, part of Tranche 1 Ashanti Region schools, received 16 weeks of training from November 2009 to March 2010. The school’s caterer was trained in June 2010 to improve the nutritional value of the food served to students, and maintain hygiene and sanitary standards. The lead teacher was trained in January 2011 during a one-week immersion training session, and has returned to the school to impart this knowledge to the other teachers at the school. The school has also received school supplies, such as books and games, from IDPRS. David Asenso has taken three loans from IDPRS, which are running concurrently. He used his loans to convert his wooden classrooms into block cement. He is very good at making loan repayments and is thinking of using his next loan to buy a bus for his school.

David says he really appreciates the work of IDPRS and is grateful to the IDPRS program for coming to his aid. He says he can now manage his school very well and that the overall state of the school has improved. David hopes to take his school to a higher level with the help of IDPRS.

For more on the IDP Rising Schools Program, visit idpfoundation.org. For further reading on the Opportunity Blog about education finance initiatives, click here.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Teaching Cartagena’s Youth to Dream Big

“Dream Big!” hailed Alejandra Sayas as she shared with us her greatest challenges and hopes in her work with the youth of Cartagena. She said, “My biggest challenge has been to encourage kids in a society that does not encourage or allow them to dream.” Alejandra is the leader of Opportunity Colombia’s Youth Entrepreneur Program, an innovative program to reach the high-risk youth of Colombia. Her inspirational message to them is clear: dream big.

We all sat in a circle in a very modest Baptist Church located blocks away from one of the most dangerous slums in Cartagena, as Alejandra told us how she helps some of the nearly 280 kids in the program do just that. We met Rafael, a 22-year-old entrepreneur, who believes that he and his friends “lack the knowledge to grow a business,” and so he said, “we want education.” Opportunity’s Youth Entrepreneur Program is a novel way to bring them that education by teaching them to develop a business plan. This is the next generation of Opportunity International clients. They have seen their parent’s life improve through Opportunity International loans and now they want to progress and work their way out of the poverty that has befallen them. Their parents have left them a legacy of Opportunity: work, faith, hope, and the ability to dream big. Rafael commented that they were distinctive from the other youth in his village and said, “In Colombia they are training the youth to be workers rather than business people, so we [Youth Entrepreneur Program] are different than them.”

One Loan Empowers a Group of Women in Need

In a village 30 minutes away, we met a group of single pregnant women who are also learning to dream big. Before finding Clevis Berrios, an Opportunity Colombia individual loan client, and her seamstress business, these women were left alone to care for their babies. Clevis told us of her own similar circumstances years prior that led her to start a foundation called thePuertas Abiertas Foundation, which cares for and trains single mothers in a trade so that they can earn money for their family. She used her loan to buy sewing machines and now, because of her foundation’s success, is training about 10-20 women to sew, knit, stitch and embroider.

Clevis’s hopes and dreams are to reach even more women by opening satellite locations with multiple sewing machines in order to bring the businesses closer to the women’s homes since transportation and childcare are often a problem among the poor. Clevis’s heart is to further help women to become self-sustaining and independent, just as she was afforded that same opportunity through her Opportunity International loan.

Big Business Dreams Become a Reality

Not far down the unpaved road in the village of Arjona, Wilmer also had a big dream. He took a leap a faith and invested all he had, along with his first Opportunity loan of $125, to purchase four small pigs. Wilmer has turned the small loan into a successful business raising pigs for local restaurants and markets. He quickly generated enough capital to pay cash for more pigs as he saw a chance to do so. But his dream did not stop there; he ultimately expanded into cheese production which employs three other villagers. Wilmer has even higher dreams of attracting investors to his business so he can continue to grow and generate income for more people in his village who struggle daily with extreme poverty.

A Displaced Woman Has a Roof Over Her Head

Around the corner from Wilmer and his Trust Group we met Carmen Jiménez, from the war-torn region of Bolivar, who was displaced by violence in her country about 13 years ago. She arrived in Cartagena with only the belongings on her back. She and her husband Carlos Sierra have three children and hope that they will have a better life, including the opportunity for an education that was so abruptly taken from Carmen and Carlos. Having been exiled from her homeland for so many years, Carmen has dreamed of having her own home for her family, and with an Opportunity loan through the new roof-and-floor program, the dream of a permanent and safe home is becoming a reality for them.

Today, we met many clients who are successfully being helped through Opportunity International; four of them are highlighted here as well as four inventive programs that Opportunity makes available to these clients. We saw Trust Groups, Individual Loan clients, and the Youth Entrepreneur Program in action. In a way, we see the correlation between an organization that is innovative and dreams big dreams in assisting the poor in new ways, and the people they assist, like Rafael, Clevis, Wilmer and Carmen, who are generating these dreams for themselves through faith, hard work, perseverance, and an Opportunity loan. Just as Alejandra so eloquently said with such conviction, we all need to dream big. This is an ability that Opportunity International is affording so many who are living in extreme poverty and we have the privilege of being a part of their solution. How amazing to watch their dreams materialize and how they are ultimately sharing the legacy of Opportunity with the next generation of dreamers.

Stay tuned to the Opportunity Blog for more updates from the Family Week Trip to Colombia in the coming days ahead.

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.

Opportunity Mexico is reaching more microfinance clients like Marcelina Sanchez (pictured) who sells fried tacos from her stall in the "tianguis" (market).

In the past two years, Opportunity Mexico has been working hard to build its client base and reach more people with microfinance solutions to help them work their way out of poverty. Under the leadership of CEO Maria Clara Martinez, the institution has revamped its processes and increased its outreach by more than 27%, up from 4,907 loan clients one year ago. The team retained its 100% rate of operational sustainability during this time of significant growth.

Opportunity Mexico continues to improve its operational processes and expand its base in 2011, aiming to double loan client outreach. The institution will also launch individual loan products in June 2011 to provide qualified clients with training and loans geared toward established businesses.

In 2010, Opportunity Mexico improved its processes by:

• Establishing a partnership with the Youth Integration Center (a Mexican government entity) to provide clients with awareness training to prevent domestic violence and substance abuse.
• Enhancing existing, and developing new, staff training modules to achieve its goal of standardizing all processes and provide its clients with consistent financial products and services, and exceptional customer care.
• Conducting monthly loan officer training to enhance staff members’ skills and successfully instill clients with confidence, motivation and transformation within the Trust Group methodology.
• Partnering with Alpha International to provide all staff with foundational training in Christian principles. All the participants agreed that the training will positively impact their ability to be effective in their roles.

Stay tuned to the Opportunity Blog for more updates on our growth at Opportunity Mexico.

From the street…

A Widow’s Tale

The life of a widow in India is hard. The life of a widow in poverty is tragic. Widows are ostracized by family and friends. Their presence is considered a bad omen, a curse. A husband’s death can send a woman and her children to the streets permanently. Selvi’s husband died nine months ago. She has two kids. And the value of Growing Opportunity (GO) Finance is embodied in her. As a coconut vendor, now in her fourth loan cycle, she has been able to provide for herself and her children. When others have shunned her, Selvi’s loan partners, an amiable Trust Group of women with whom she works side by side every day, have provided a strong support system. And her loan officer has taught her how to run her streetside business more efficiently so she can begin to save. Life is still hard for Selvi. She works twelve hours a day, 7 days a week. But Opportunity has helped to give her hope and dignity.

Students at a Chennai school share their stories with the Insight Trip travelers.

From the school…

The Cardiologist’s Heart

When each of the 16-year-old scholarship winners stepped to the front of the room to accept their certificates, they shared their future aspirations. They wanted to be doctors and nurses. They dreamed of building ships and planes. They were focused and bright and, unfortunately, living in poverty. Once the ceremony ended, one timid student, in front of her peers, her parents and her teachers, approached our group. An aspiring cardiologist, she quietly expressed her gratitude to Opportunity India. She said her school had solicited scholarship money from many other organizations but none would help. For too long, she told us, she had lived with the fear that she would be unable to continue her education. She didn’t waver when her tears started to flow. She kept right on talking with the conviction of a girl who had been given an opportunity and could finally believe in her own future.

A singing group of GO Finance staff members welcome their visitors to Chennai.

The presentation…

The Downs and Ups

In a presentation from the CEO Jim Reiff and the staff of Opportunity India, the startling facts of India’s poverty were followed by solutions and projections. The majority of Indians live on less than $2 per day, about a third on less than $1. With small business loans, training and supervision, Opportunity has already helped over 60,000 Indian clients establish greater financial stability and independence. Over the next several years, our hosts at Opportunity India told us that that number is projected to grow to over 500,000.

For more travel blogs from Opportunity’s Insight Trip to India this week, click here.

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.