November 5, 2009 (Thursday): Opportunity International

We started the day at Opportunity International’s Urwego Opportunity Bank headquarters in Kigali. We met with the CEO, Jeffrey L., and the COO, Ross N. What special hearts and visions these men have for serving the poor in Rwanda! Jeffrey is from South Korea, and Ross is from India, but they have adopted the people of Rwanda as their own. Opportunity has over 39,000 loan clients in Rwanda and has grown at the rate of 30%+ per year since the Rwandan operation was started in 2007. Their loan size ranges from $25 to $1500 per person, with an average loan size of $208. Loans are made to “Trust Groups,” which are self-selected groups ranging in size from 15 to 50 people per group, with each person guaranteeing the loans of the group. Interest rates are set at rates comparable to rates in that region, and are calculated to cover the bank’s operating costs. These loans are predominately to women and the repayment rate is over 98%! Jeffrey stated that Opportunity is “betting on people.” They train their clients using 8 teaching modules covering (1) Financial literacy; (2) Health & hygiene; (3) Biblical truths and values (although all religions are respected and honored). These lessons take weeks to complete before the first loans are disbursed. The loan officers meet with their clients twice a week to collect loan payments and provide advice and encouragement.

After our meeting at the main bank, we travelled with a Loan Officer and a Transformation Officer to a remote village with a large marketplace. The trip took over an hour each way on a very washed out dirt road through numerous tiny villages with many people living in abject poverty. Fortunately, Opportunity provided an experienced driver in a safari-type vehicle! Along the way, we passed a work crew digging ditches on either side of the road for fiber optic cable. Tim told us that these were genocide prisoners who had been granted forgiveness by the families of their victims and are now serving their remaining sentence through community service. They live in facilities just outside of the villages and generally serve ten years in community service once they confess and are forgiven. The ability to forgive such unspeakable horrors can truly only come from the power of God, and it gave us chills to see these men working alongside the family members and neighbors of their victims.

We had the honor of observing two Opportunity Trust Group meetings, and toured the businesses of several members. The women (and several male members) were dressed in their very best traditional clothing, as were the children that some of them brought along. Rwandans are exceptionally beautiful people and incredibly friendly. One group honored us by presenting us with three pineapples and sharing cola drinks with us. Each group had several members give their testimonies about how the loans from Opportunity have transformed their lives. They spoke with great pride and huge smiles and received rounds of applause from the other members. Every person talked about the blessing of being able to send their children to school and provide for their families. As highly as I thought of Opportunity before this trip, my regard went even higher after these inspirational meetings.

Once we were back in Kigali, we had a very late lunch at an outdoor restaurant covered with a heavy tarp. November is the rainy season in Rwanda, and during lunch, a storm came through that felt like a mini hurricane! The winds and rain were so fierce that they broke a section of tarp away from the roof! Fortunately, we were under a dry section, and the storm was over in less than an hour (typical in the rainy season). After a stop at a local Kigali marketplace to visit a few more Opportunity clients, we retired to the Kigali Serena after a very long, but rewarding day.