For far too long, women and girls have been held back from reaching their full potential. Legal, social, cultural, and economic inequalities disproportionately exclude women from full and equal participation in their communities and economies, leaving their voices unheard and their potential unreached.

In their daily lives, women and girls must navigate complex webs of mistaken perceptions, including stigmas around educating girls, biases against women-led businesses or female employees, and assumptions that women are riskier investments than their male counterparts.

But when women are equipped with resources and opportunities, everyone benefits.

Our Programs and Products

Access to Financial Services

• Opportunity International develops tailored financial services appropriate and accessible for marginalized women, like loans that leverage social groups in lieu of collateral.
• Opportunity equips partner financial institutions with trainings and workshops to help them shift their business practices to better serve women who have been marginalized.
• One of the most important shifts is expanding mobile banking services to allow women to conveniently manage their accounts from their phone.
• Opportunity also helps financial institutions build and expand agent banker networks, which allow rural women to make cash deposits or withdrawals with a trusted local shop owner instead of traveling to the nearest branch.

Literacy, Business, and Livelihood Skills

• For microbusiness owners, Opportunity helps women learn how to budget, invest loans, and create a financial plan for sustainable growth.
• For farmers, Opportunity engages women, often for the first time, to teach them technical skills like how and when to plant seed, apply fertilizer, or set up an irrigation system.
• In addition to productive skills, Opportunity also provides training in livelihood skills, such as health and wellness, leadership, and fostering strong relationships.
• For girls, Opportunity is working to expand access to quality schools in their local communities. With access to loans and training, school owners are investing in better infrastructure, qualified teachers, and more classrooms and boarding facilities—ensuring they can serve more students, especially girls who would otherwise have to walk far distances or drop out.

Access to Networks and Productive Resources

• Opportunity helps women form or join local support groups, like savings and loans groups or farmer cooperatives, offering women a local network of encouraging peers to learn from and work with.
• Through these groups, women are often able to find their voice and agency and collectively integrate into local markets and economies. For example, a group of farmers has much more power in negotiating seed costs with a local supplier than would one woman on her own.
• Through these groups, Opportunity reaches more women with support services at a lower cost.

Guaranteeing Rural Opportunities for Women (GROW) Strategy

According to the UN, closing the gap in farm labor, productivity, and wages between men and women could increase global GDP by nearly $1 trillion and reduce the number of people living in food insecurity by 45 million. Yet, in Africa, women own only 1% of land, receive only 7% of agricultural extension services, and are granted less than 10% of small- scale farmer credit.

Across the board, women face systemic challenges that limit their ability to access resources. Because of this, Opportunity International has been working to establish a comprehensive approach to address the challenges faced by female farmers. Strategies include:

• Build climate resilience through strengthening women’s ability to mitigate losses and adopt alternative livelihoods
• Enhance agricultural productivity via climate-smart practices and regenerative agriculture tools
• Empower women in farm management, promoting farming as a family business
• Expand economic opportunities by increasing the number of female Farmer Support Agents to provide income and enable them to train and support their communities

Women’s Empowerment in Action

In India, an impact study found that 89% of women who used a loan for their microbusiness reported up to a 66% increase in their income. And 98% of women reported increased well-being.

81% of female farmers in Ghana and Mozambique reported increased decision-making power, and 58% reported increasing their income as a result of Opportunity's Agriculture Finance services.

In Uganda, girls' absenteeism from school reduced when parents had access to Opportunity's school fee loans to cover educational expenses.