Supporting Women and Mothers Worldwide: A cabi Story

When women succeed, everyone around them succeeds.

That belief has shaped cabi’s business, culture, and community for more than two decades. It is also what has made cabi’s partnership with Opportunity International such a natural fit since 2008.

Together, we have seen what happens when women with entrepreneurial drive are met with the right tools, training, capital, and support. They build businesses. They strengthen families. They create confidence, connection, and opportunity that extend far beyond themselves.

For cabi, that belief shows up every day through our community of Stylists. Each cabi Stylist builds her business on her own terms, shaped around her life, her family, and her community. Through that work, she creates more than a sale. She creates confidence, connection, and a sense of belonging.

For Opportunity International, that same belief shows up in the women we serve around the world. These women are building businesses in local markets, on farms, in shops, and from their homes. They are working to support their families, educate their children, and create new possibilities for the next generation.

Their circumstances may look very different from those of a cabi Stylist in Chicago, Denver, Dallas, or Miami, but the drive is familiar: the desire to build something meaningful and create opportunity for themselves and their families.

That shared spirit is what has powered this partnership for more than 15 years.

cabi directly supports Opportunity International through a giving model rooted in women helping women. When a new cabi Stylist joins the business, cabi makes a donation in her name to support Opportunity’s work. cabi customers also have the opportunity to add a donation at checkout, extending the impact through everyday purchases. Together, those gifts help fund small business loans and support for women entrepreneurs around the world.

Since 2008, cabi has helped fund 19,895 small business loans across 30 countries. That means nearly 20,000 women have been met with resources to invest in themselves, grow their businesses, and move forward on their own terms.

Those numbers represent mothers, daughters, sisters, and entrepreneurs doing the hard work of building a better future. They represent women who are selling more, earning more, strengthening local markets, and making choices that can change the course of their families’ lives.

That kind of investment is catalytic. The World Bank has noted that investing in women’s economic opportunities creates a multiplier effect, helping reduce poverty while strengthening families, communities, and economies.

So many cabi Stylists are mothers building businesses that fit into their lives, not the other way around. They are creating flexibility, purpose, and opportunity while caring for the people they love. And so many of the women Opportunity serves are doing the same, often in places where opportunity is much harder to access.

Whether in Malawi or Miami, the hopes of these women entrepreneurs are deeply familiar: stability, dignity, a safe home, food on the table, and the chance to dream a little bigger than the day before. Women invest in their families. They invest in their children. They invest in their communities. When they gain access to capital, training, and trusted support, they grow businesses that help strengthen local economies from the ground up.

Partnerships like cabi and Opportunity help close that gap.

They show what is possible when women building businesses in one part of the world stand alongside women building businesses in another. They remind us that entrepreneurship is not only an economic force. It is a human one.

Looking ahead, our hope is simple: every woman who wants to build something should have the chance to do it. Now, not someday.

The barriers facing women entrepreneurs are real, but they are not insurmountable. Together, cabi and Opportunity International are proving just that—helping more women build the futures they have always imagined.

Learn more about cabi and Opportunity International's relationship in their new video»