If You Want to Go Far…

What I love about the stories about your entrepreneurs is that not only do they make themselves successful with the loans that you give them, but they really pay it forward and they want to look for ways to help others like them. So when you were choosing entrepreneurial entrepreneurs and who to fund, do you look for a certain set of traits or characteristics?

That's a great question. We started giving loans to individuals. And we discovered, yes, it is good, it's effective. But along the way, what we found out was a more effective way is actually to give loans to groups of individuals where they come together and they take a loan and then they decide to fund each other's businesses with the money that they loan from us. But in that process, what they do is they not only get the loan, they get each other to support it. They get each other to help. And what we found is that on the one side, our loan payment terms are better about somewhere, between 97 and a half to 98 and a half percent of all loans got paid back on time with interest around the world. End of last year we had 10 million loan clients. So this is not a small portfolio. But on the other side is that those loan clients are getting daily everyday help from each other. And I could tell you story after story of how somebody fell ill. Somebody had an accident in the family, couldn't open their store and their partners their people in the trust groups, we call them, stepped in.

And I would imagine that there's a little bit of accountability, too. Not only do they help each other, but it's like, you know what? You better stay on the good path because Opportunity International helped you here.

That's exactly right. And we are helping each other. They are in effect, if you will, guaranteeing each other's loans so they are absolutely committed together. And I think there's an important principle there that applies to and in my mind to all of us is, there's an African saying that probably says it best is, "If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go with your friends."