Led by our local partners, your support helps provide small loans to over 6 million entrepreneurs in Asia. This helps them build their businesses, earn regular incomes and create a future for their families.

Here are some of the women globally that have been supported with a small loan and their stories… 

 

Desriana (Weaving traditional batiks and textiles)

 

Desriana lives in Rote, Indonesia, and has been weaving since she married her husband, Yandri. Learning from her in-laws, she used a small loan to buy additional fabrics, colours and dyes and equipment to get her weaving business off the ground.

Previously Desriana struggled to sell more than one or two batik or textile pieces at a time and wasn’t able to produce as much product as she wanted. With the help of a small loan, she's weaving more textiles and can hang them up at her home, where her eye-catching traditional designs are being seen by the local community. Desriana now sells five to six pieces a month.

Suryani (Selling river stones)

With a boom in housing developments around Lubuklinggau in South Sumatra, Indonesia, Suryani saw a golden opportunity and started a business collecting and selling river stones.

With the help of a small loan from Opportunity’s local partner, Suryani purchased materials to build her own river vessel to collect stones in the river near her home. The vessel helps her move stones upstream to the riverbank to sell to developers as building materials.

Thanks to her persistence and hard work, Suryani's sales turnover has increased to IDR 3–4 million (around A$300-$400) per month.

Surianti (Clove farmer)

  

Cloves are an integral part of Indonesian cooking, lending their flavour to traditional dishes like Rendang, Nasi Goreng (fried rice), and Soto Ayam (a traditional noodle dish). They are also used in medicines.

Surianti has a small clove plantation in Samaturu and needed capital to hire staff to help with the harvest this year as well as investing in new equipment. Surianti has three children, two sons and a daughter. Her eldest son Arpiat (19) is starting a family of his own, her second son Askar (13) is in high school, and daughter Nurul (8) is in primary school.

Surianti was concerned that if she had to delay her harvest, the drying process would be hampered because it would coincide with a month of heavy rains, which would then impact on the quality of her cloves and her sales and ability to provide for her family.

She took out a small loan from Opportunity’s local microfinance partner and was able to hire clove pickers to harvest her cloves, and buy clove-picking equipment including ladders, ropes and sacks, as well as food to feed the workers while they were working in her plantation.

Being able to employ pickers, Surianti provided jobs in her local community, and together they harvested her crop smoothly and quickly and with enough time to dry the cloves ready for selling. She sells the dried cloves to vendors in the area, and sells them directly at the local market. Surianti is extremely thankful for the loan that allowed her clove harvest to proceed successfully this year, enabling her to better provide for her family’s needs. She hopes that her children can continue their education, setting them up to get good jobs and earn a higher income in future.

Bathsheba (Palm sugar syrup)

 

With six children to support – ranging in age from 20 to just one year old – Bathsheba and her husband farmed seaweed as their primary income source.

Seaweed is an environmentally friendly crop with a long tradition in Indonesia, one of the world's largest producers of farmed seaweed. However, crops are seasonal, prices are volatile, and seaweed crops and equipment are susceptible to extreme weather events. This makes it hard for seaweed farmers to generate a sustainable income.

After a cyclone wiped out their crop in 2021, Bathsheba and her husband tried their hand at making palm sugar syrup to improve their income. With the help of a small loan from Opportunity’s local partner, they were able to buy supplies to get their business started.

They rise at 3am every day to avoid the hot sun – her husband climbs the palm trees to extract the sap in the cool of the morning. He scales the trees with ease, reaching the top by placing his feet in small grooves cut into the trunk of the tree; a simple tool and bottle to collect the sap attached to a belt around his waist. Bathsheba cooks the sugar syrup, stirring the sap and reducing it down into a thick syrup. Once it has cooled, she bottles and sells the honey-coloured sugar syrup to families in her neighbourhood.Their eldest son now runs the seaweed farming business, while the palm sugar business is now their primary source of income. They see a lot of potential to grow their sustainable production of palm sugar, and are focused on helping their children continue their education. “The money we are saving from selling the palm sugar will be enough for us to send our children to university,” said Bathsheba.

Imagine the Opportunity

“These borrowers become the most amazing entrepreneurs, starting a small business in their village and demonstrate real entrepreneurial skill to not only create a successful business, but to overcome the challenges of their environment,” says Opportunity CEO Scott Walters.

"Those challenges range from a lack of community infrastructure such as roads, hospitals and schools, exposure to extreme weather conditions; even inefficient transport for raw materials and finished goods."

Opportunity microfinance partner portfolio repayment rate is an amazing 98 per cent. This ensures that funds can be recycled after the loan is repaid, and the impact of our initial investment can create future opportunities.

If you would like to find out more about Opportunity’s work or donate differently - equipping families and communities to end poverty through entrepreneurship and enterprise, please consider giving a hand up to women and families globally.

Projects supported by the Australian Government through the Australian NGO Cooperation Program (ANCP).