by Kelly Jennings-Robinson
How do you take your coffee? Whether it's black or milk with two sugars, why not make yourself a piping hot cup to sip as you read about our client, Teddy Namagembe? She has a closer connection to your cuppa than you might think. Time to put the kettle on! Meet Teddy. She is a 52-year old coffee farmer Uganda and always has been. As a child she used to help her parents on their coffee farm and she knows all there is to know about coffee growing. The work is hard. She works around 12 hours…
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by Opportunity International
Rwanda is ‘the land of a thousand hills’. It is also a fertile land full of opportunities. Agriculture is the main economic activity in Rwanda, with 70% of the population engaging in the sector. Tea, coffee, maize, potatoes and cassava are some of its key crops. Farmers in Rwanda work in cooperatives. Led and supported by government policy, there are over 2,400 cooperatives nationwide, with roughly 500 to over 2,000 cooperative members. But many cooperative members still use poor and…
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by Charles Wabwire (Consortium Lead for our DFID funded Girl's Education Challenge Project)
At the end of September 2018, I attended the Global Youth Economic Opportunity Summit in Washington DC, USA. The summit provides a forum for professionals who prepare young peope to learn, earn and thrive in a changing world of work, to design and develop evidence-based, innovative and scalable youth programmes that enable young people to succeed. During the summit, we highlighted our work with DFID’s Girls’ Education Challenge. Our project in Uganda works with five partners to educate…
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by Opportunity International
The global population is getting younger. Worldwide there are over 1.2 billion young people aged 15 – 24 years, which accounts for one out of every six people. But for the majority of these young people there are not enough jobs available to them. Throughout our programmes we work with a number of partners to provide access to finance, training and support that enable people to thrive. And this includes young people. Equipping young people with employable skills and business knowledge…
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by Faye Ruck-Nightingale
The inclusion of business and life-skills training in children’s education is increasingly important, particularly in the developing world, and particularly in Africa. In 2016 the UN estimated Africa’s population at 1.2 billion (almost 50% under age 18) and calculated an increase to 2.4 billion by 2050[i]. To survive this huge increase in population growth young people need skills to rely on for life. Whether entrepreneurial at heart, or passing on learnings to their peers and families,…
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by Opportunity International
Since launching in 2009, Opportunity’s Agriculture Finance programme has provided innovative programs to smallholder farmers in Africa. Clients are given an opportunity to provide for their families through our financial trainings, access to bank accounts and financial services, teachings on best agricultural practices, and connections to fair markets where they can get a good value for their crops. Have you ever been curious about how our partners in the field provide the trainings that help…
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by Jenny Dunn
Once again we have been overwhelmed by your generosity to our Roots of Change appeal. The UK Aid Match Appeal, which ran from December 2017 to February 2018, highlighted the need of many rural farmers to access the finance and support needed in order to grow sustainable livelihoods and provide for their families. With every donation matched by the UK Government, the appeal raised an incredible £7.4 million - our most successful appeal to date! Thank you to all those who gave and supported us. …
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by Opportunity International
Our Agricultural Finance (AgFinance) Programme focuses on facilitating access to finance, training and markets for smallholder farmers. Since 2009, the programme has reached nearly half a million farmers across seven countries. We want to share with you some direct feedback from our clients. During a three-year DFID funded project in Ghana and Mozambique, we spoke regularly to clients about their family and business. We conducted surveys and questionnaires throughout the three-years in order…
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by Pete Parisetti
Last week I attended the Power of Savings Groups SEEP Conference in Kigali, Rwanda. There were an impressive 460 participants. A good 80% of them were non-Western, and, of them, at least 50% were women. This triggered the personal reflection of how far the pendulum of local ownership has swung. Perhaps it has always been like that in development, but up to a decade ago in emergency aid proportions were essentially reversed. It was great to see. Two main themes cut across all the proceedings.…
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by Opportunity International
Our 2013 Spirit of Opportunity Christmas appeal raised valuable funds for a four-year project in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The project, in partnership with the UK Government’s Department for International Development, set out to expand our reach to people living in one of the poorest countries in the world. Only 12% of people own a bank account in the DRC. It is a fragile country with a delicate political and financial infrastructure. Despite these challenges the project…
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