Opportunity International UK is the largest British charity to specialise solely providing microfinance to poor ‘clients’ who are beneficiaries or customers of local partner organisations primarily in the developing world.

We partner with over 40 local 'implementing partners' located in Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, and Latin America.

As well as the UK, Opportunity International has fundraising ‘support partners’ in Australia, Canada, Germany, and the United States.

The Opportunity International network of experts from many of our partners around the globe provides advice, coordination and innovative projects to extend and improve the work of Opportunity International.

We currently serve more than 1 million clients.

What motivates your work?
We are motivated by Christ’s call to serve the poor, and we wish to provide a tangible sign of God’s love for all people. We therefore actively seek to make our services available to all people regardless of their gender, creed, ethnic background, or marital status. We welcome clients and donors of all beliefs.

Our Christian grounding also leads us to recognise the importance of social and spiritual transformation in addition to economic transformation.

As part of the Opportunity International network, we work with partner organisations whose board and staff members share our motivation and ethics.

Most of our funding comes from private donors, which enables us to carry out innovative pilot projects and to leverage funds from other sources. We also receive funding from churches, governments, corporations, and foundations.

Yes. Our clients have maintained an average repayment rate of 98 percent or better.

What is a Trust Group?
A Trust Group is a group of typically up to 30 poor entrepreneurs, mainly women, who guarantee each other's loans so that they can start small businesses and support their families. 

They operate small businesses in the informal sector. The majority are retail businesses, where clients buy and resell goods like fruit, vegetables, clothing and soap. Others work in agriculture, raising chickens, pigs, fish, bees, or crops such as groundnuts and mushrooms. Other activities include food preparation, sewing, knitting, weaving and basket making.

Women receive 84% of Opportunity International's loans. Lending primarily to poor women ensures that their business profits are spent on education, health, housing, and nutrition, maximising transformational impact on families and communities. Financial independence earns the women respect in their communities as neighbours approach them for advice and assistance, generating a positive cycle of self-esteem. Access to financial services empowers and equips women to make their own choices and find a secure route out of poverty and social exclusion in a sustained and self-determined way.

Opportunity International does not work directly on health issues. Our microinsurance products cover credit life and funeral insurance in cases of illness or death, including from AIDS. Many of our partners provide their employees and clients with training in health issues including nutrition, mother and child health, and HIV/AIDS awareness and prevention.

Microfinance is the provision of a broad range of financial services and products such as credit, savings and insurance designed to assist poor workers who lack access to financial services in the mainstream banking sector to develop their small businesses, save their earnings, and guard against risks.

Microfinance is one of the most powerful tools we can use in the fight against poverty. It provides poor people with the means to work their own way out of poverty and is more secure and sustainable than many aid projects, with a longer and more lasting impact.

Microcredit is the provision of small or ‘micro’ loans to poor people not served by banks because of their poverty, lack of collateral, illiteracy or lack of formal identification documents.

Microsavings are deposit services that allow poor people to securely store small amounts of money for future use. Often without a minimum balance requirement, savings accounts enable families to save for unexpected expenses, plan for future investments, and protect assets (for example, providing for orphans’ education or preventing a widow’s in-laws from appropriating her earnings).

Micro insurance protects clients and their families in case of unforeseen events (disaster, disease, death) that may cause low-income households to spend their savings, divert working capital away from their businesses, or become unable to make loan repayments. Our partners offer products such as credit life insurance, property and crop/weather insurance and funeral benefit insurance.

Interest is charged on loans for three reasons:

i. to cover the costs of running a microfinance programme

ii. to help people become financially independent under normal market conditions

iii. to avoid distorting the local economy.

Our savings clients earn interest on deposits larger than a small minimum amount.

We currently operate in 27 countries:

Africa

Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Rwanda, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe

Asia

China, India, Indonesia, the Philippines

Eastern Europe

Albania, Macedonia, Montenegro, Poland, Romania, Russia, Serbia

Latin America

Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Peru

Opportunity International does not work directly on environmental issues. Providing financial services to rural and urban communities supports income and employment generation in those areas. This in turn helps to mitigate pressures on the environment and natural resources, and may reduce migration arising from destitution and desperation.

There are many ways to donate to Opportunity International UK - online, via Direct Debit or Payroll Giving, over the telephone or by posting a cheque to our office, or by considering leaving a legacy. Your donation will help us continue vital work empowering poor people through providing access to financial services.

Click here to go to our donate section

You can also get involved with Opportunity International UK by fundraising at work or in your community, setting up a corporate partnership, or even through volunteering in our Oxford office.

Find out more here.

People in deep poverty who wish to earn a livelihood to meet their families’ basic needs.

Opportunity International UK is a registered charity. Tax paid may be reclaimed through Gift Aid.