Your impact
through education

Education Report – October 2018 (data to June 2018)

Currently 27,296 families are using school fee loans to manage their finances and keep their kids learning in school. Including these families, EduFinance in India has now benefitted 215,283 children, helping them break the cycle of poverty with better education.

PORTFOLIO CONTINUING TO STRENGTHEN

While the long-term impact of demonetisation continues to be seen in the portfolio's high PAR30 of 12.24% (the measurement of loans outstanding by more than 30 days), this figure has been steadily declining since its peak in Q2, 2017.

GROWING GLOBAL FOOTPRINT

Globally, EduFinance has benefitted 2,321,409 children. The initiative is working with 27 partners in 17 countries.

NEXT STEPS FOR ASIA

The EduFinance team have progressed discussions with a number of potential new partners, both in India and other countries in the region. Ahead of these imminent partnerships the team have recruited education expert Dr Amrita Vohra to lead the introduction of our Education Quality framework in schools taking out school improvemet loans

Education Report – March 2019 (data to December 2018)

To December 2018, EduFinance had 40,599 active loans in India. This includes both school fee loans and school improvement loans, offered through long-standing program partner ESAF as well as more recent partners Indian School Finance Company (ISFC) and Shiksha.

EduFinance has now benefitted cumulative 536,360 children in Asia, helping families break the cycle of poverty through education. 

GROWING GLOBAL FOOTPRINT

Globally, EduFinance has benefitted 3,249,487 children – this has grown 928,078 over the past six months.  The initiative has now worked with 36 partners in 20 countries.

NEXT STEPS FOR ASIA

2018 also saw strong growth in the global Education Quality program, which has now reached out to 1,069 schools. The first schools in Asia are beginning to implement Education Quality with a pilot program launching in India in the second half of 2018. 

Meet Charanjeet

Charanjeet Kaur, 40, lives in Dongargarh, a city in the state of Chhattisgarh. Together with her husband, Harbhajan, she has two sons; Harjeet and Mandeep. The family’s home is a rented house with two rooms and a small kitchen where most days Charanjeet prepares vegetable curries, rice and roti for her family.

Charanjeet earns a small income crafting ornaments used to decorate Hindu Goddess statues. Meanwhile her husband runs a welding unit where her eldest son, Harjeet, works too.

Her youngest son, Mandeep, is a talented student with dreams of becoming an engineer. But in the past Charanjeet would struggle to save away enough to cover the lump sum needed to cover the school fees.

Thanks to your support Mandeep can now go to school and receive quality education.

With a small education loan, Charanjeet no longer worries she won’t be able to cover the fees and send her son to school and she can better budget and manage her family’s finances.

We are a happy family. Thank you for understanding what we wanted.

Charanjeet

Cumulative child impact (CCI) is used to estimate the number of children who have benefited from both current and historical loans since partnering with Opportunity, including both school fee and school improvement loans.

Portfolio at risk is a stringent measure of a microfinance institution’s loan portfolio quality. The portfolio at risk calculates the total value of outstanding loan balances for loans, for every payment that is overdue by more than 30 days.

Meet Madhuri

On a road in Nagpur, India, Madhuri walks her children to school in their freshly pressed school uniforms, large backpacks engulfing their tiny frames. Ria (4) and Yesh (5) are two of the only children in the area able to attend the community school—many parents can't afford to send their children anywhere other than the poorly resourced local public school, particularly at so young an age. But Madhuri has always wanted her children to receive a quality education, and, with your support, Opportunity's school fee loans have made this possible.

Madhuri and her husband Ajay married for love, and are determined their children will have every opportunity to live the lives they choose. Both parents work very long hours—Madhuri in her sewing business and Ajay seven days a week in a factory, as well as a night watchman after hours.

But the family still struggled to afford regular meals and the rent on their tiny basement home. They squirrelled away every spare rupee, hoping to save enough to pay for the tuition and uniform costs that every school—public, community or private—required. The large sums due at the beginning of each school year used to fill them with dread.

But news of the Opportunity school fee loan brought hope. Madhuri and Ajay excitedly applied and were accepted. The loan immediately made school fees manageable, with only small instalments due each week as opposed to a lump sum required at the start of the school year.

Madhuri and Ajay make it a priority to pay their loan repayments every week—they're determined to take out another school fee loan next year, and one after that.

Ria and Yesh love learning the alphabet in their kindergarten. Yesh loves playing cricket and dreams of becoming a policeman when he grows up.

Madhuri used to worry about how they would afford to pay for him to stay in school long enough to achieve his dream. She doesn't worry about that any longer.

Thanks to your hand up, Ria and Yesh now have the chance to learn to read and write, to study in their chosen fields, to break free from the cycle of poverty and to live out their dreams—as policemen, lawyers, doctors or artisans—whatever careers they dream of.

And with each school fee loan that is repaid and recycled, other families are given the opportunity to afford the education that will rewrite their children's futures.

Meet Sapna

When Sapna was a child she enjoyed one incredible priviliage too many girls her age didn't – and still don't. She grew up surrounded by a supportive family committed to educating all their children, even girls. 

As just a 4th grader, Sapna was already taking action against the injustices in her community. Her neighbor and friend Pinky didn’t go to school, because Pinky's family could not afford to send her. Each afternoon Sapna would race home from school, books ready to teach Pinky everything she had learnt that day in her classes.

In Sapna’s mind, education should be for everyone, even those who can’t afford it or don’t believe they deserve it.

Today, Sapna runs a low-cost, affordable private school – also referred to as a community school – in her community. Educating over 200 local children, her school provides an alternative to under-resourced, over-subscribed public schools. 

By paying a small fee – which kind-hearted Sapna is known to waive when families fall on hard times – parents secure better quality education for their kids, while supporting their school to become a sustainable business. 

With access to tailored education finance products, schools like Sapna's can invest in better infrastructure and resources, while parents can secure the hand up they need to make sure they can pay school fees year-round.