Opportunity International

Opportunity International, Inc., (Opportunity), is a tax exempt, publicly supported faith-based corporation. By providing financial services, support and training, we empower people living in poverty in developing countries to build sustainable incomes, educate their children and escape generational poverty, in the process transforming their lives, their children's futures, and their communities. Opportunity's majority owned banks earn income from its banking operations and focus on deploying local funds and financial services to its clients. Opportunity internationational savings and loans in ghana (oisl) believes their customers are at the center of the business and are served with life changing products such as loans, deposits, micro insurance, e-banking services and remittances. Transformational training, business advisory services, and capacity building are embedded in all client interactions.the bank operates in ten (10) out of the sixteen (16) regions in ghana, with thirty-five (35) branches and three (3) agencies, providing innovative financial and non-financial products and services to bring clients at the base of the pyramid into the mainstream financial services, thereby advancing financial inclusion.

Opportunity's education finance program objectives are clear: get more children in better schools. We break down two obstacles to education: access and quality. Access means enabling more ways for children from low-income communities to safely attend school. We increase education access by connecting affordable non-state schools with financial institutions which provide school improvement loans for school facilitiesmore classrooms, school buses, computers and school fee loans which allow parents to send all their children to school. Quality means students have a safe, child-centered learning environment using best teaching practices so learners can be successful. School leadership professional development training allows school leaders to improve their schools both as places of learning and businesses. Teacher mentor professional development training helps schools build their capacity to provide regular, evidence-based teacher training and coaching to all their educators using a mentorship model. In 2023, education finance programs reached over 1.9 million children in 7,056 schools and helped release more than $202.8 million in capital to schools and learners.

Opportunity implements its programs in 30 countries through a worldwide network of staff, branches, subsidiary banks and local nongovernmental organizations, as well as local implementing partners: commercial and nonprofit and microfinance institutions. Opportunity provides grants and maintains a minority equity interest in a number of key implementing partners to ensure a long-term alignment of interest in serving the poor. Additionally, such investments enable Opportunity to leverage local investor funds and debt to increase services and maximize the funds deployed to serve the economic needs of the poor. In 2023 Opportunity and its partner organizations served 20 million clients of which 97% of clients are women. Read our 2023 impact report at opportunity.org/2023-impact.

Opportunity implements its programs through a worldwide network of staff, branches, subsidiary banks and local nongovernmental organizations, as well as local implementing partners- commercial and nonprofit and microfinance institutions. Opportunity's programs are designed to maximize the local partner disbursement of loans, provision of savings accounts, remittance and others services to its clients, alongside the training and support provided by Opportunity to them. Opportunity's objective is to increase empowerment, entrepreneurship and employability amongst bottom-of-the-pyramid households, as evidenced by an increase in regular income and quality of life standards. Opportunity uses its charitable donations to invest equity, fund its direct operations, especially its education finance, agricultural finance, digital financial services and support its implementing partners. Its operating model results in the disbursed value of loans each year valuing on average 10 times the total charitable donations received. In 2023, agriculture finance programs reached over 341,000 households and released over $85 million in farmer loans.