Anjali © Photo Courtesy of Opportunity International
Opportunity International Canada is a not-for-profit organization that empowers families on their journey out of extreme poverty to new lives filled with strength, hope, resilience, and the power to achieve their dreams. We offer a business solution to families living in poverty by providing holistic microfinance services, including lending, savings, insurance, and transformational training.
We serve people living in poverty who lack economic choices, experience low and irregular incomes, face unequal access to assets and have little opportunity to earn a decent living. With a particular focus on women, we also serve children and young people, since ensuring that everyone can achieve a sustainable livelihood starts at a young age. Early pioneers in a movement that now provides access to finance to over 200 million people globally, we are turning our attention, ingenuity and creativity to focus on the marginalized, hardest-to-reach groups. Our goal is to tackle poverty and exclusion across the generations by helping families build sustainable and resilient livelihoods that can withstand shocks and adapt to change.
To achieve these desired impacts, we focus on a number of specific outcomes for these families:
- The acquisition of knowledge, capacities, and skills to leverage economic opportunities, including access to quality education and the financial capability to build adaptable economic activities and pay for essential life cycle needs.
- The means to earn an income and to make investments in existing or new business ventures, sustainably growing job-creating enterprises that have positive ripple effects within their communities and local economies.
- Increased resilience to crises, disasters, conflicts, and climate change through the ability to insure themselves against shocks and accumulate savings, allowing them to invest in productive uses, provide for unexpected expenses, and reduce their risk exposure.
- An increased sense of agency resulting from having a greater number of reliable choices with which to navigate their financial lives, as well as the power and confidence to make the most out of the resources they have available to them.
We build on the inherent resilience of the clients, whose setbacks and adversities have forced them to be practical and innovative. We concentrate our creativity on populations, areas, or sectors where more is needed to unlock talent and fulfil potential. Our Signature Programs, AgFinance, EduFinance, Health and Microenterprise, unify our global resources around relevant themes and make our combined contribution significantly more impactful.
A Life Impacted
Over the years, Anjali has received six loans from Opportunity International and now owns her own small shop and plot of land. She is passionate about female empowerment and making a difference in her community, often volunteering and making small personal loans to her neighbours. Anjali is a role model, reminding us that women entrepreneurs are truly agents of change.
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689 million people around the world live in extreme poverty with no hope for change. Opportunity International provides innovative programs to help families who are leaving poverty behind.
