Opportunity International Australia Blog

Lucknow, the capital of Uttar Pradesh and the most populous state in India, is home to over 180 million people. Reportedly, there are more than 90 million people in the state living on less than $2 per day. Many of them run small businesses to expand their income and to provide a better life for their families. Although opportunities for employment are scarce, people are creating and expanding new businesses every day.

Today our touring party visited two of Opportunity International Australia’s microfinance programs around the city. Rahul, the CEO of our partner Mardgarshak, (Click here for the latest overview of our programs in India) hosted our visit to a rural village 40 kilometres out of town. As usual, the car trip was hair raising and I sat in the front passenger seat (nick-named the ‘suicide seat’) as our local driver sped, dodged and weaved his way through the local traffic for nearly two hours. After many eye-closing experiences, we arrived. It was hot, dirty and very poor. (See the photo) 

We met 20 women who are actively working to create a new life for their families. They were enthusiastic, enterprising and willing to learn .The women have created their own businesses making toys, incense and candles (see photo). Margdarshak provides them with enterprise training and skills development together with microfinance, including small loans. Our discussion with the women revealed that as a result of their business growth, their income had increased and they can now afford nutritious food, a better education for their children and can be a greater contribution to the household budget. Although they are progressing, they clearly want to do more. They have even asked their local loan officer for larger loans to help them expand their business and grow their income.

With the shortage of funding for small enterprises in India, we need to fill the gap and continue to provide funding and opportunities for people to break the cycle of poverty.

What’s clear to me is that although poverty in India is complex, our programs are making a real difference to people and their families. I love the way our programs not only provide small loans but support our clients with skills training. I love the way we work beside them.

But more is required and so much more can be done. As one person on the trip said to me today, “I love the way my donation is multiplied and ends up helping people to help themselves.”

On Wednesday we are visiting more clients and I can’t wait. Being in India and meeting our clients is inspiring, but I can’t escape the need. A parking meter in Sydney makes more money in one hour than what the majority of people in India make in a whole day! It challenges me to reconsider what I can do. I know that together we can (and are) making a difference.

Stephen Robertson
Donor Relations Director
Opportunity International Australia

If you would like to make a difference and help empower 3,500 women living in India with microfinance and support services, please click here.

This week Ant Clark (Opportunity International Australia’s Donor Relations Manager in SA and WA) and I are hosting a trip with six Opportunity donors to visit clients in the slums of Delhi and in the villages around Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh. We’ll be visiting two of Opportunity’s awesome local microfinance partners and seeing some of the microenterprises they’ve helped people living in poverty start. I’m really excited to be visiting these places again.

As I sit at home watching France beat England on my plasma screen TV, in my lounge room - living in comparative luxury, over 800 million people in India are earning around $2 from their entire days work! It’s hard to believe the difference between our respective worlds, but I am about to be confronted by the contrast again with this trip.

What amazes me is that the people we visit are so creative, enterprising and willing to work hard to give their families a better life. Even though our worlds seem different, their desires and skills are very similar to ours. The major difference is a lack of opportunity and access to assistance. In many cases they need capital to help establish or expand their small businesses, but they don’t have access to formal banking services. That’s where Opportunity steps in. Through our local partners we provide them with small loans to help them grow their business and improve their income. But what I like about Opportunity’s approach to microfinance is that it’s more than just lending money. Opportunity has a social focus and wants to see people transform their lives.

On our first few days we’ll be visiting Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh – India’s most populous state – to check out our programs in that city. We are meeting the local team at Lucknow led by Rahul Mittra from one of Opportunity’s microfinance partners, Margdarshak. These guys are a great example of social microfinance – they provide credit and a wide range of services to transform people’s lives. I can’t wait.

You can follow our trip via this Blog or on my twitter – www.twitter.com/srobertson65 

Stephen Robertson
Donor Relations Director
Opportunity International Australia

You’ve seen India’s slums depicted on the big screen in Slumdog Millionaire – now you can do more than just watch.  Help us empower 3,500 women – click here to make a difference today.

Day two: Opportunity International Australia's Research Project Manager, Calum Scott, is in Pune (central India) visiting one of Opportunity's microfinance partners, Annapurna. Watch this video to learn about Opportunity's pilot Social Performance Management (SPM) program.

Day one: Opportunity International Australia's Research Project Manager, Calum Scott, is in Pune (central India) visiting one of Opportunity's microfinance partners, Annapurna.

I’m back in monsoonal Madras, otherwise known as Chennai. It’s wonderful to be back in India – wonderful, exciting, chaotic India.

This trip is all about getting more funds to socially focused microfinance institutions (MFIs). Many poor people are being sidelined while the local and international banks in India are not lending at the rate these MFIs need. People are on the journey out of poverty but they are being parked by lack of funds.

Over the next week I’ll be meeting with people who want to address that very issue – some foreigners, mainly locals. People who can influence local bank leaders and the government. People who are looking to catalyse local and foreign funds to work alongside money provided by Opportunity donors. And I’ll be meeting with two of our key MFI partners: GO Finance in Chennai and Annapurna Mahila Mandal in Mumbai.

Today’s press here is suggesting that BASIX, one of the large MFIs based in Hyderabad, is about to default on its loans. The state of Andhra Pradesh (of which Hyderabad is the capital) has particular challenges not being experienced elsewhere in India. Still, as I was driving in from the airport, Ranjani (our leader in India), sent me this text: "Welcome back to India and the MF sector here in the most historical phase of its existence!"

It is a key time but I’m optimistic. The signs are not all negative. The central government and the Reserve Bank of India have come out strongly in favour of microfinance that focuses on the needs of the borrower. During the last month, the capital markets have again provided funds to the sector.

Opportunity is working with 18 MFI partners in India which serve over 1.5 million families. Our investment is in their lives.

So come with me on this journey as we make a difference. Follow my blogs here and on Twitter at www.twitter.com/roberddunn

Robert Dunn
CEO
Opportunity International Australia 

On the approach to Payatas, a slum on the northern outskirts of Manila, a large mountain looms on the horizon. It seems geographically improbable in a landscape which otherwise seems fairly flat. It’s not until we get closer that I realise it’s not a mountain at all – it’s a colossal pile of rubbish.

To outsiders, the mountain is an eyesore. To locals, it’s a source of shelter, income and food. In the couple of days we spend in the slum I notice new dwellings, made out of plastic bags and scrap wood, springing up on top of piles of rubbish. I hear stories about how people brush away maggots from food they find on the mountain.

Many people spend their days scavenging on the mountain for items they can sell to junk shops, earning 80 pesos (A$1.80) for a long day’s work if they’re lucky. I also hear that some women in the community have turned to prostitution.

Ordinarily, this kind of place would make me despair. But I’m here with TSPI, Opportunity International Australia’s partner in Manila, and I’m meeting women who have been able to make another choice – a choice to start a business and make a new start. They’re able to work in a safer environment and generate a steady income.

After two days in Payatas, my eyes are stinging from the burning plastic bags and the next day I’m sick. It’s nothing that I won’t recover from quickly, but it makes me realise that for the local people, there is no respite from this challenging environment. Aside from the physical side effects, I know Payatas is leaving me with a more lasting impression - the stories of people who are moving, if not from rags to riches, then from rags to a safer, more hopeful future.

Zoe Hogan

The word poverty can conjure up a myriad of diverse images and meanings in people’s minds, malnourished people; helplessness; people begging for money or food; people who lack the initiative or will to make decisions to advance themselves.

Over the past few years, the types of things that come to my mind when I think of the word poverty has evolved quite significantly.  

Touching down in Kupang, I wondered what poverty would look like in Indonesia. More particularly, what it would look like in the capital of West Timor where I would be spending the next 4 days meeting clients and capturing images of their stories. It sounds harsh, but my experience growing up in Africa (albeit in a bit of a bubble of security and privilege) has, in a way, dulled my emotional response to seeing the tough conditions in which poor people live. This is not to say I never feel moved or sad, seeing difficult circumstances connected with poverty. It’s rather that I am no longer distracted by these emotional thoughts as a single focus of attention.

When you can get past the emotion, you can see that the majority of poor people are furiously industrious and innovative. They aren’t all sad and desperate. They work crazy hours and make huge personal sacrifices in going to great lengths to make money to provide for their families. They are really just like you or me, but are constrained by a lack of access to things and services that facilitate a less vulnerable life.

So…back to Kupang. My perception is the same as in Africa. I met a woman named Sharlota Huma (pictured) who spends her days cutting up hundreds of strips of fuchsia coloured plastic bags. Winding and carefully tying each strip to a black rod - she creates one of the most innovative looking dusters I’ve ever seen! For Sharlota, poverty means not having a financial safety net to support herself and her two children as her husband disappeared one day and left her. Poverty to her is not having the savings to pay for proper medical attention to have prevented the blindness in one of her eyes. It’s not having the money to pay for services to treat the goitre on her neck. It’s about the short amount of formal education she had as a girl and the aspiration to afford to give her kids a better education so they don’t have to face the same future. Sharlota hopes that the loan she recently got from TLM* will give her the chance to start increasing her income. This would give her family a greater sense of security and reduce their vulnerability.

When you meet people like Sharlota, you can see that organisations like Opportunity Australia and its partners are a vital component in the process of poverty alleviation. And although microfinance in itself is no silver bullet to ending poverty, it can be a catalyst for change when combined with other essential things like access to education, health services, national security and fair political processes.

So when my grandkids are asked the question “What does the word poverty mean to you?” Hopefully their response will be along the lines of “I don’t know Nanna, that’s something from the olden days, you tell us what it means!”

*Opportunity Australia’s microfinance partner in West Timor.  

Cristina Smith

Donor Services Coordinator

On 17 October, Typhoon Juan (or Megi) hit the Philippines, leaving a trail of destruction in its wake. Roads were blocked, electricity was cut off and people took refuge in schools and churches as the typhoon tore through the northern island of the country, Luzon Island.

More devastatingly, Juan has ruined thousands of hectares of rice crops, right before the harvest season. Opportunity International Australia’s partner Alalay sa Kanularan Inc (ASKI), has 26 microfinance branches in northern and central Luzon that have been affected. Currently damages amount to Php.47,424,569 (over A$1.1 million). All affected clients were engaged in rice production, and in addition to losing between 40- 80% of their crop, the low quality of the yield is expected to reduce rice prices. This will severely affect the income of clients already living in poverty.

ASKI is preparing to conduct relief operations in the region, with clients in need of immediate and long-term support as they work toward restoring their livelihood.

If you would like to support Opportunity as we support ASKI and our other microfinance partners, please click here.

Mark Daniels
Asia Pacific Regional Director

When I think of an Indian wedding, I think of a large gaudily bedecked hall packed with women in brightly coloured saris and expressive jewellery and equally colourful garlanded men in formal kurtas. I might also imagine a banquet of beautifully prepared north-Indian food (love that Indian food!) and a large band playing lively Bollywood numbers as couples take to the dance floor. But in Assam, in the remote north-east of India, all a family really wants for a wedding is a clear open space, some shelter from the rain and enough seats for everyone in their village.

Sabita, a client of Opportunity Partner RGVN, provides just that.

When I visited her modest wedding supplies rental store in Bihata Chariali, a rural area some two-hours drive south of India’s mighty Brahmaputra River, I found stacks of well-used plastic chairs, thin corrugated tin sheets (temporary roofing for open air weddings) and piles of plates and cutlery.

It might not seem glamorous or even festive – there’s no stationery department or flower stall – but Sabita tells me that her business is thriving. Since her first loan from RGVN, she has gradually built up her stock, employed her sister to help with the business and become well known and respected in her community.

Sabita is the daughter of an RGVN self-help group member. After leaving school she received business training from RGVN, along with an initial microfinance loan. Like many of RGVN’s clients, the support Sabita received was a key tool in being able to start up her own small business.

But her subsequent success is something she can call her own.

When I ask her what she intends to do with her next loan from RGVN she is the model of a determined business woman, explaining that she plans to buy a portable electricity generator, telling me how much this will cost and how much extra income she will be able to earn.

She has already diversified her business by installing a phone booth in the shop, an investment enabled by an earlier RGVN loan. In the short time I spend in the village, it’s clear that Sabita’s store is something of a meeting point for local people, and curiously for the local livestock – goats and chickens in varying concentrations are everywhere in Assam!

Before I leave, I take another look at the stacks of chairs, sheets of metal and piles of cutlery, which still seem completely unfamiliar from the Indian wedding images in my head. But Sabita’s pride in her business and determination are very familiar and should remind us that, whether here in Australia, or in India, the Philippines or anywhere else, where there is hard work and opportunity, there will be inspirational people like Sabita.

Calum Scott

Research Projects Manager

The sun was shining bright as we left a TLM branch in Kupang, West Timor, Indonesia. TLM is Opportunity International Australia’s microfinance partner in West Timor, and three of its staff members are all looking forward to lunch after patiently waiting for Rebecca and I to complete our work at the branch, learning about the branch’s operations and assessing how their microfinance delivery process is carried out. Coming from the Finance Team at Opportunity, we were very fortunate to have this chance to visit Kupang. It is our fourth day working in Kupang, but our first outside of head office, and it’s wonderful to be able to go out to the branch and visit some clients.

We had quite a massive lunch of Indonesian dishes. It felt like we deserved this after a couple of long days of hard work in the office, as well as it being 2pm – a very late lunch for me! As we still had some time when we finished, we decided to visit a client in a more remote area. We went on our way to her village, taking in the beautiful panoramic view of the calming sea. The sun started to disappear and the blue sky was replaced by an overcasting band of clouds. The hard work and massive meal, combined with the overcast weather, sent me off to sleep until Rebecca woke me up close to the village where Nancy and her family live.

There is no proper road going into the village, but the gravel and rocky trail is sufficient for the car we travelled on to reach close to Nancy’s home. She has five children ranging from a three-year-old to a high school graduate. With the help of her husband, she produces palm sugar coins by cooking them on a traditional stove flamed by firewood on the ground outside her house. On a good day, working about 12 hours gives her 400 palm sugar coins, to be sold for a total of IDR 100,000 (equivalent to approximately  A$12). The sugar coins are sold to those trading in the market. The individual loan provided to Nancy by TLM has helped her manage her cashflow, as her buyers only pay her on a monthly basis.

On our way back to the office, I couldn’t help but think on the opportunities and luxuries that are so abundant in our lives. Working without an air conditioner at the branch earlier and having a late lunch is certainly incomparable to the laborious hours Nancy puts in each day in the hope of a better future and better education for her children. It is great to see that despite her life's challenges and circumstances, microfinance has given her the opportunity to better manage her daily needs and sends her kids to school. We could tell that she appreciated the opportunity provided to her. And it is someone like her that reminds us of the purpose of what we do here at Opportunity – even if what we do in our daily roles as a member of the Finance & Donor Services team may not always seem so connected to the clients we are serving through our local partners.

Chrissie Lukas

Revenue and Database Administrator