Opportunity International Canada

Clevis Berrio (Cartagena, Colombia)started a clothing business several years ago with one other woman.  Originally they made clothes for adults, but they received enough requests from pregnant women that they decided to make maternity and children’s clothes – and now are the only maternity clothes maker in all of Cartagena (1.1 million people).  Eventually they partnered with four others, so that there are six women who joined together to form the Sentimentos clothing label.  They have one main shop, and distribute to a second shop as well.

Clevis became ...

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Help us reach 300,000 new people with financial services in Africa

Microfiance is a sustainable solution to global poverty.  Now Opportunity International is going BIG in Africa.  CIDA is alongside offering to match all donations for this project, and if you become a MicroVenture Philanthropist by giving monthly, it will be matched until March 2014 - that's 23 months!

If you start giving $41.50 a month today, over the next 23 months you ...

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I feel so fortunate to live and work in such a beautiful part of our world. I am someone who has always enjoyed adventure; whether it is at home running around Thetis Lake, climbing mountains or traveling to far away places. For me it is life giving. It has always been in the back of my mind to do a long bike tour, but to take 4 months off has not been realistic. Recently I was accepted to the nursing program at Camosun college(1yr waitlist). As I ...

Unlocking the potential of the poor. That is the purpose of microfinance when used correctly. Damian von Stauffenberg in his interview with PovertyCure states: “What creates wealth? People create wealth. The source of wealth is inside our head; it’s our creativity. It’s not even our muscles; it’s our creativity, something we’ve been endowed with.… And if you have a vast reservoir of poor people living in these slums … that is a source of untapped wealth that far exceeds the biggest oil reserves you could possibly find underneath your soil. ...

By Abbi Antablin from Opportunity International US on March 12, 2012

A pungent, unfamiliar, almost rancid but still sweet, scent hit my nostrils: freshly ground yucca meets a growling grinder. Five men man the contraption: one filling the large funnel, one jamming a large stick into the funnel to feed the yucca chunks into the grinder, one scooping the pulp out of the bottom, one shoveling the pulp into a sack, and one, well, doing a great job ...