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PO Box A524
Sydney South NSW 1235, Level 11, 227 Elizabeth Street Sydney NSW 2000

Telephone: 1800 812 164

© 2024 Opportunity International AustraliaABN 83 003 805 043

Families in Australia can help families in developing countries by cooking up a spicy curry

By Kirsty Munro

Having a global focus is important. We all need to think beyond our own circumstances to raise awareness about families in developing countries who struggle just to survive. Struggle to feed their children. Struggle to put a roof over their heads. Struggle to send them to school.

My family believes fundraising for Opportunity International Australia through campaigns such as the Great Australian Curry is a great way to connect with families in India, as there is no more traditional food in India than curry. I feel very connected with the mothers in developing countries who are the recipients of Opportunity’s loans. We need to define ourselves as families from the same planet instead of from the same suburb and help one another.

 

For my husband’s 40th birthday, I asked our friends to make a donation to Opportunity instead of purchasing him gifts. I cooked up some curries using tips from the chef at my local Indian restaurant. He also recommended the Sanjeev Kapoor website with fabulous curry recipes – including my favourite, palak paneer (a fresh spinach curry with cubes of paneer cheese). It was a fabulous evening! And we raised around $2,500 to give small loans to around 35 families in India so they could build businesses. What a fabulous way to celebrate a birthday, knowing that several dozen families are about to lift themselves out of poverty by receiving a hand-up, not a hand out.

Bringing friends together for a curry night is the perfect way to share how Opportunity provides small loans to families so they can build businesses, earn regular incomes and break the cycle of poverty themselves. Word-of-mouth is so much better than TV advertising for spreading the message about Opportunity. It’s a more personal and powerful way of letting people know about Opportunity’s work in India, Indonesia and the Philippines.

My children are very interested in helping families who live in poverty and they participate in almost all the fundraising we do for Opportunity. They are enthusiastic volunteers and explain Opportunity’s objectives and purpose while selling car parking during the Adelaide Show and selling ‘pick-your-own’ experiences with our two mammoth mulberry trees to those going to the Goodwood Showgrounds Markets. They have held their own little fundraising activities like selling lemonade or biscuits to passers-by, and their interest in the welfare of others was the reason we started fundraising for Opportunity in the first place.

In addition to supporting our family’s fundraising for Opportunity, David, our second son, organised for his school to take on ‘Projec10’ last year, a Young Achiever’s type of venture where the profit goes to Opportunity. We didn’t even know, but he organised two classes to fundraise through small teams doing their own microfinance projects (like car-washing, baking and selling icy poles) and they made almost $900 for Opportunity in only five weeks!

The Munro Family

Fundraising together has been a great activity for our family. I encourage other families to have a Great Australian Curry lunch or dinner and to let more people know about Opportunity. Get them on board with microfinance. Get them on board with philanthropy and giving to others who have so much less than families in Australia. It’s fun, and a great way to enable women in developing countries to be empowered and their children educated so they too can live lives of opportunity and hope, freedom and choice.   

If you would like to host a Great Australian Curry fundraiser click here.

 

 

 

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