Welcome to BEC!
Opportunity International (Opportunity) is a global non-governmental organization based in Chicago, USA. Founded in 1971, Opportunity designs, delivers, and scales innovative financial solutions that help families living in extreme poverty build sustainable livelihoods and access quality education for their children. Opportunity equips families with the tools and training they need to build their businesses, send their children to school, provide for their families, and break the cycle of poverty. In 2021, Opportunity reached 18.7 million clients, 97 per cent of whom are women, through 104 partners, facilitating loans worth $2 billion.
Launched in in 2009, Opportunity International’s Education Finance initiative (EduFinance) is the global leader in unlocking private capital in the affordable private education sector today. The goal of EduFinance is to help accelerate an end to the global education crisis of 619 million children and youth either out of school or in school but not learning. Opportunity’s approach helps more kids go to school and stay in school, while systemically improving the quality of education schools provide. This work is accomplished much faster and more effectively by investing in local parents and educators who, impatient with waiting for their local public schools to improve, build their own affordable private schools to provide the quality education they envision for their children. To date Opportunity has established EduFinance portfolios in 30 countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America, enabling the investment of $564 million to 15,000 schools through 134 banks and financial services companies cumulatively.
Opportunity’s model uses catalytic capital to leverage investment from local financial institutions into low cost schools in emerging markets. Opportunity provides expert technical assistance to socially-focused financial institutions that are committed to the shared goal of access to education for all. Opportunity supports them to develop, launch and grow sustainable education lending portfolios through the provision of training and support in market research, financial product design for school improvement and school fees, staff training, and access to a suite of proprietary back office systems improvement.
Opportunity enrolls affordable private schools in a development program to improve the quality of education children receive and foster an enabling environment for learning. Through training to teachers and administrators, accompanied by mentoring of teachers and classroom staff, the program builds the human capacities to run more sustainable institutions and offer higher quality of instruction to students. Opportunity also assists school leaders to assess key education quality metrics within their schools and then assists them to develop and implement plans to increase their performance in their areas of priority.
The combination of increased access to finance to invest in schools and the coaching, mentoring and, internal assessment and improvement together lead to creating the conditions where more children can learn and thrive. Looking ahead, Opportunity has set an ambitious goal to accelerate the growth and adoption of this model in order to reach a cumulative 19.3 million children and youth in at least 30 low- and middle-income countries by the end of 2025.
Visit the Opportunity International and Opportunity EduFinance websites to learn more: