Opportunity International Australia exists to provide opportunities for people living in poverty to transform their lives. With over 40 years’ experience in microfinance and support services, we use a business approach to solve poverty. Rather than a hand-out, we provide our clients with a loan as small as $100 to help grow their small business. This enables them to earn an income and afford food, water, shelter and an education for their children. Visit www.opportunity.org.au
Photo of the week: Jaya
Jaya lives with her family in a small house in rural Kerala, India. For many years she struggled to afford food and other basic items for her family. It wasn’t until she took out a small loan from EMFIL, one of Opportunity International Australia’s partners in India, that she was able to improve her farming business and purchase additional poultry and cattle, enabling her to sell eggs and milk to the local community and supply milk to a large farmer’s co-operative.
Globally, there are over 450 million children currently at risk of malnutrition according to a new report published by Save the Children. Even more worrying is that every hour, 300 children across the world die from lack of nutrients in their diet. The main cause of this problem is not a lack of food, but rising global food costs. In the last few years, economic instability and global recessions have meant that food prices have become volatile, a problem which has the greatest impact on the world’s poor. 
The new report states that child malnutrition is largely a hidden problem with few physical symptoms; unlike starvation, it goes largely unnoticed at a global scale. Malnutrition leaves children more susceptible to disease and illness, as well as causing mental and physical stunting.
In India, findings state that 24% of children go hungry every day. While India has seen significant economic growth in recent years, poverty, illness and malnutrition are still rife. Many families can’t afford to give their children milk, bread or meat and many go to bed hungry. Often parents are forced to take their children out of school prematurely so that they can begin working to help support the family’s food supply.
Hunger and malnutrition in young children have enormous ramifications for their future quality of life. Opportunity International Australia understands that to curb malnutrition and illness in children, it is important that they receive adequate and nutritious meals. By providing small microfinance loans to people living in poverty in developing countries such as India, families are able to start a small business, earn a regular income and afford proper meals. Improved financial security also means that they are able to withstand volatile food prices and have a greater chance at leading a life free from poverty.
With your support, Opportunity can help secure the futures for more families living in poverty. Click here to donate today.
http://ibnlive.in.com/news/24-per-cent-indian-kids-go-hungry-daily-survey/230602-3.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9696000/9696493.stm
Tomorrow all around the country, Australian’s will be celebrating all things great about Australian history, culture and development. While this national celebration is a great time for summer fun, Opportunity International Australia would like to honour those passionate and dedicated Australians who are living and working abroad in support of a greater cause. Many of these people work hard in often difficult places, separated from their friends and family to make the world a better place.
AusAID, the Australian Agency for International Development, has recently developed a television series called ‘Changing Lives’, paying testament to the work of dedicated Australians doing extraordinary jobs around the world. One episode features Mark Daniels, Opportunity’s East Asia Director (watch video below). Mark and his family moved to the Philippines more than two years ago to support Opportunity’s microfinance programs in the Philippines.
This Australia Day we would also like to acknowledge another staff member – Chris Murdoch, Opportunity’s Strategic Services Director, who relocated to Hyderbad, India with his family two years ago. Chris’s work in the area is incredibly valuable as he investigates a range of community development initiatives to support local communities.
A big thank you to all our staff working abroad this Australia Day (and those supporters, staff and volunteers working locally) and another thank you to AusAID for their continued support and the inspiring ‘Changing Lives’ series that encapsulates the incredible lives of Australians working overseas.
Happy Australia Day!
Today we visited a village 10 kilometres outside of Varanasi, India. As we arrived at the village, we stepped back (way back) in time! Although the poverty was extreme, we witnessed a level of empowerment and progress that gives great hope. 
The village on the outskirts of Varanasi can only be described by pictures. It comprised of mud huts with dirt floors, straw as bed, basic agriculture and animals everywhere – even in the bedrooms. I felt like I had walked into the stables where Jesus was born! The only resemblance of the 21st Century were mobile phones and one florescent light bulb!
We were visiting this village with Cashpor, Opportunity International Australia’s microfinance partner in Varanasi. Cashpor serves women living in extreme poverty, in one of the poorest states of India – Uttar Pradesh. The state’s population exceeds 180 million which includes more than 90 million people living on less than $2 per day. In most cases, the women that Cashpor serves are making less than A$1 per day.
We sat down in a community group meeting and the level of excitement was high. The first thing the women did was sign their name on the loan register. These women are illiterate, yet Cashpor has taken the time to teach every one of them to sign their own name – no finger print; no X; but their own name. This seems insignificant to us, yet for the women of this village it represents dignity and empowerment.
This year Cashpor is launching a new service focused on community health. Opportunity is supporting this initiative. Microfinance is more than lending, it’s about helping communities to prosper in a number of ways.
You can help by providing a donation of just $200 to help women like this to educate their children and to progress out of poverty. Click here to donate today.
Stephen Robertson
Opportunity International Australia
www.opportunity.org.au
I have been in India for the last two days hosting a small group of donors from Australia to show them the appalling living conditions in the slums of Delhi and how they can enable the people living here to have a better life.
I want to share with you the life of one woman that we met today in Seemapuri, in north-east Delhi. To meet her, we had to walk down a narrow, claustrophobic alley way, stepping over raw sewerage in the drains, ducking regularly to avoid the live electrical wires crossing overhead. I had to breathe through my mouth to avoid smelling the stench. As I walked, it struck me that this was one of the most appalling slums I had ever seen.
After a few minutes of waiting, we were ushered into a small room to meet some women who are microfinance clients. One of the clients we met was Samhita (middle front).
Samhita is 19, a year younger than my daughter. She was enthusiastic, smart and engaging. She explained to us that she completed year 9 at school, married at 16 and has two children. She and her husband migrated from the east of India to find work in Delhi – her husband still hasn’t found employment. Their home is two small rooms, each about 2.5 by 4 meters, with just a door and no windows.
Samhita has an ambition to educate herself further and to educate her children. She wants to have a better life. She started a business 18 months ago and has taken two small microfinance loans. Her current loan is about 19,000 rupees (A$380). With this loan, she has set up a recycling business where she collects recyclable waste such as plastic and glass bottles, to then sell. She collects the waste from a rubbish tip which is literally outside her back door (See photo below).
Her business generates an income of about 3,000 to 4,000 rupees (A$60-80) per month, and she’s saving money to she send her children to school and continue her own education. She also tells me that she is a dancer and loves music.
Despite the appalling living and working conditions that surrounded her, Samhita was full of hope. She told us that without the help of her small loans, she could not have started her business. In fact, she is now asking for a larger loan so she can expand her business and increase her family’s income even more.
In Delhi today, there are more than 300 people like Samhita ready to receive a loan. A donation of just $200 can help someone like Samhita set up a business and enable them to provide a secure future for their family.
Meeting Samhita, I’m reminded just how much of a difference you can make through microfinance..
Stephen Robertson
Donor Relations Director
Opportunity International Australia
www.opportunity.org.au
Photo of the week: Nice threads! Thanks to a small loan from one of Opportunity International Australia’s partners in India, Margdarshak, Shabeena was able to buy the equipment she needed to start her own weaving business. She has tripled her family’s income and can now afford to send her two children to school.
India assaults the senses; Mumbai's slums overwhelm them. 
Slums can be ranked by their liveability, or I suppose, by their awfulness. Annapurna, Opportunity International Australia's microfinance partner in Mumbai, ranks the slums they serve in five categories: one being the worst living situations and five being the best.
On day five, Annapurna took us to a category two slum.
Conveying the rank of a category two Mumbai slum in words is beyond my capability as a correspondent. This slum sits atop and alongside a rubbish tip. The people here are almost all rag pickers: they pick through the rubbish for what is salvageable and sell it. The reality of living on a rubbish tip is that it stinks and there are dense clouds of flies everywhere. It’s grimy and dirty and cluttered. The slum we visited in Delhi seemed downright homey and liveable compared to this.
With Annapurna’s director, Mehdda, and Opportunity’s Indian director, Ranjani, I met a group of women who were on their second microfinance loans. We gathered in about the only space where 17 people could, a small paved area sandwiched in between a row of dwellings and the tip. Bags of rubbish surrounded us (there is nowhere else for the women to store their inventory). A plastic covering lay on the ground, and the women sat on it. They insisted that Mehdda and I sit on two chairs, no doubt some of the very few pieces of furniture in this place.
As we sat there amongst the flies and the stench, we were physically quite close but I felt we were worlds apart. The women I met in Delhi – whilst extremely poor – were clearly far better off than these women. The women in Delhi lived in a cleaner and healthier environment, had better food and clothes and were far more confident. These women just seemed to me, at first blush, to be in absolute desperate circumstances, and here I was to talk with them about their lives.
In my job, I’ve had to speak to people in nearly every imaginable circumstance: welcome the likes of Prince William, Bono and the Pope; meet with elderly public housing tenants with no English; speak with local residents angry about new roads or housing developments, or people living with disabilities or terminal diseases. I’ve held forth on national television, in question time, and in my fair share of tough press conferences. But here, in a Mumbai slum, I have never felt more ill at ease or nervous to speak before a crowd of people. Communicating relies on building upon a common or shared understanding. What could I possibly understand about the lives these women were living?
Fortunately, Mehdda and Ranjani were there to help, though Mehdda started in Hindi by introducing me as a ‘former chief minister’ in Australia. When they all swung their eyes towards me, Ranjani translated the introduction and said ”They are duly impressed.” Great, I thought, that’s just added another stretch of distance between my life and theirs. But Mehdda then asked the women to tell me about their children. How many do you have? Boys or girls? Ages? Are they in school? What do you hope for them?
As each woman spoke about her family, our common humanity was evident. A theology professor of mine once said that human beings are creatures of hope – otherwise why would we, as a species, continue to give birth to children we know will one day die? The women I met in that Mumbai slum were the greatest evidence of that statement. They wanted nothing more than a better future for their children, and they would pour what meagre resources they had into that aim. With the loans they were able to get through Opportunity’s partner Annapurna, they were literally building that opportunity: building roofs of tile or tin, rather than tarps, putting fly screens in their dwellings, even putting down this small area of paving upon which we sat. One woman said to me ”We don't want our children to be rag pickers; we want them to work in offices.”
Another said: “My children are going to school, and I want them to be able to move out of here.” Then another asked me if I had children. I told them I had two boys, aged 13 and 11, and they smiled and nodded approvingly, more duly impressed by my role as a mother than as a former chief minister. We’d found our shared understanding. We loved our children. We wanted the best for them.
I asked them what their husbands thought about the loans. They all smiled or laughed. Some said their husbands were really happy – it meant that there was still money, even if the husband couldn’t work. In a country where girls are not always educated and where women sometimes only eat if there is food left over after the men finish, these sentiments are pretty significant.
One woman said to me ”We want the loans – not grants. The loans we pay back. It makes us feel good that we pay it back. We want to make it on our own, not with money just given to us.” I've been a feminist pretty much my whole life, but I’ve never heard such a strong assertion of female empowerment.
I asked them what difference the life and health insurance that comes with every loan from Annapurna makes to their lives. Two women, both looking too young to be widows, told me that their husbands had died. The life insurance pay-out was the difference between their children staying in school or dropping out to become rag pickers.
We stayed for about an hour. After photos and hugs and clasped hands, we left. I will admit, I was sad to leave them there, but also relieved to escape the flies and the stench. Even some of our more experienced and local Opportunity staff found this slum hard going. Yet Annapurna works there regularly; delivering microfinance and basic health education. All of Annapurna staff are female, and mostly young, recent social work graduates or women from the local community trained up to be client service officers.
We then followed the Annapurna women to a category four slum, a place not on a rubbish tip, and where most dwellings are constructed with bricks and the most basic of necessities, including electricity. We crammed into an upstairs one-room dwelling, 20 of us, including a few children. This was a client meeting, where the monthly repayment was made and recorded by each client. Microfinance organisations like Annapurna have needed to create their own infrastructure and systems: application forms, repayment records, receipt books, insurance cards, etc. It’s an entire paper-based system that is eventually fed back to the head office and entered into a computer system. It’s a rigorous banking system invented and maintained in an otherwise chaotic world.
That was day five. The preceding day was one of high level meetings with Chief Executive Officers of major corporations and banks, trying to convince them (with some success) of the benefits of microfinance and the need for corporate social responsibility in India. It’s an emerging idea in India, with companies like Axis Bank setting up a Foundation that receives one percent of the bank’s profits. Their goal is to ‘create one million livelihoods in 5 years’.
Days four and five were an example of the two India’s that exist: one, the fourth biggest economy in the world posting strong growth, and the other, where one-third of the world's poor live.
Kristina Keneally, MP
Opportunity International Australia Ambassador
No words to describe
India is a country where superlatives seem inadequate. Words fail to convey the enormity of any particular dimension. The streets, buses and footpaths aren't just crowded; they are extremely crowded, teeming with people. The traffic isn't just chaotic; it’s maddening and terrifying chaos. The dust, rubble and haphazard buildings with random wiring aren't just everywhere; they are inescapably so, the most haphazard landscape of this most haphazard country.
And the poor are so very poor. Unimaginably so to a westerner. Today we visited a slum south of Delhi. In terms of the physical conditions, it was all I imagined and more. Single-room houses, built with the barest minimum of brick, concrete and tin. Each house (that seems to be the wrong word - maybe shack?) is smack right up next to its neighbour. Narrow, sometimes one-person-wide, dusty paths separate the rows of homes. An open canal of running water/sewage runs along the path, right under each home's open doorway, with stepping stones precariously positioned over. People and flies are everywhere, especially at the 'children's playground' - a couple of swings placed around a large dug-out area in which a large pile of rubbish sits.
The presence of a 'playground,' which was full of children, not to mention the 'infrastructure' of the canal and the electricity that seemed to be connected to each dwelling, indicates a functioning community in the midst of such poverty. It also points to the tenacity of India's poor. The slum we visited is not 'official' - it is not recognised as an area for residential dwelling. No NGOs work there, no government services are provided. The residents are literally eking an existence out of nothing. This is where people living on less than $2 a day live.
In 2008, Opportunity International Australia, through its Indian subsidiary - Dia Vikas Capital, gave capital to a local microfinance start-up, Shikhar. Shikhar's intrepid and indefatigable founder is Satyavir Chakrapani or ‘Satya’, who began his work riding a motor bike around Delhi looking for people to help. He came upon this slum where no one else was providing assistance. He started talking to the women there. Many of them were trapped in extreme poverty by crushing debt. The only way families in this 'unauthorized area' could borrow money was from the village money lender, who was charging 800% interest. One of the women he met had taken out a loan for 5000 rupees ($100). Due to the interest rate and how the repayment was structured, she had paid back 7000 rupees ($140) and not even touched the principal. This was debt she would never escape. Satya had found the first group of five women to whom Shikhar would loan money.
Today we met 10 women, each time in groups of five inside one of the hardscrabble dwellings. The buildings are immaculately clean and incredibly, compactly organised. We sat on rugs on the cement floor: Satya, Opportunity's CEO Robert Dunn and Marketing & Communications Director Helen Merrick, Dia Vikas' Managing Director Ranjani, Shikar's Branch Director Nittan, me, and five women. In the second house, Rob and Satya had to wait outside. There wasn't enough room. Yet it was home to a family of 7.
Again, superlatives fail. To say these women were confident in their business skills or optimistic about their futures is an understatement. They needed little invitation to tell us how microfinance has changed, and is changing, their lives.
Before Shikhar, many of these women were indebted to the village money lender. They didn’t earn money, and their husbands would work when they could. Their children didn’t attend school. They had no savings. Some of them, literally, had no official identity. The first time they saw their name in print was on the loan papers.
But from these dire circumstances, so much has changed - and with microfinance, these women are making the positive changes for themselves.
One woman has put a roof on her home and built a second room. She now rents it out for a steady income. She has five children. She tells me that she is using the income to pay for ‘private tuition‘ for her children. In a school system where teachers only show up part of the time, private tutoring is the only way to guarantee a consistent education.
One woman started a juice shop, and then a second business, a mobile juice stall. Now she's employing others.
We visited an egg shop run by an older woman. She buys eggs at 2 rupees each, hard boils them, and sells them for 5 rupees each. She took Ranjani and I to the back of her shop to tell us that she makes 250 rupees ($5) a day. She says to us "I am making so much money!" and points out all the new inventory she now sells - tea and some snacks. Then she hugged us both.
A few houses later I climb up a bamboo ladder to a room built on top of a dwelling. It’s about the size of an Australian suburban bathroom. Inside is one woman, one sewing machine and hundreds of pieces of woven plastic sheeting. She is sewing them up in order to hold sugar, salt and other commodities.
She tells me she started with one customer. Now she has six, a second location and seven employees. She says she felt very proud that she is creating jobs for others.
One of the women, a mother of five, had opened a very tiny, but successful general store wedged in between two dwellings and in the shadow of piles of shipping containers. I asked her whether her neighbours had noticed the changes in her family and if they were wanting to get microfinance for themselves. She said, "Oh yes, they see my kids have better clothes, better food and go to school. We are ambassadors for microfinance in this community."
They are ambassadors for microfinance. They are also ambassadors for hope. Superlatives fail me again in describing how amazing these women are. So inspiring, positive, confident, creative, powerful, purposeful, and so very hard-working. I was awed in their presence.
Today Shikhar has 13 branch offices, and 14,000 active borrowers. From those first five women in 2008, today Shikhar is bringing microfinance - very small loans and insurance - to thousands families living in poverty. But more than that, Shikhar – and Opportunity’s other microfinance partners – is opening a door to an opportunity for a better future. And the women we met - and thousands more - are walking through that door, creating a future for themselves and their families. What better ambassadors could there be for living with hope and optimism?
Kristina Keneally, MP
Opportunity International Australia Ambassador
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