Vicki Escarra is the CEO of Opportunity International, a nonprofit organization that provides small business loans, savings, insurance and training to more than five million people working their way out of poverty in the developing world.
Opportunity International promotes job creation through access to financial services and transformational training for those who have limited opportunity. There are few jobs in the developing world. Entrepreneurism enables their clients—those living on less than US$1.90 a day—to earn a living. By creating and supporting jobs for small-scale entrepreneurs, Opportunity International sees a multiplier effect where more children are educated, more food is produced and communities thrive. Their diverse programmes include providing access to loans, savings programs, insurance, and business training along with other sustainable interventions to empower community entrepreneurs to launch and expand businesses.
For people living in poverty, this organization believes sustainable work is a powerful link to a renewed sense of dignity and purpose, and a pathway out of poverty.
Escarra recently spoke to me briefly about Opportunity International’s work across Africa and some of the challenges and opportunities in microfinance and its deployment across the continent.
Tell me about your professional background – What motivated you towards stewarding such a unique enterprise as Opportunity International?
I worked my way through college. My first job out of college with Delta Air Lines turned out to be much more than just a way to make a living. Shortly after I started, I was fortunate to meet the CEO, who encouraged me to think big and gave me an opportunity to explore my potential. That opportunity led to me working my way up through 16 different jobs and finally to chief marketing officer of Delta. As I climbed the corporate ladder, I learned one universal truth: if you give someone an opportunity and commit yourself to partnering with them, they can achieve almost anything through hard work. This mentor/mentee relationship and support is similar to what Opportunity provides clients to break the cycle of poverty, transform their lives and strengthen their families and communities. I’m grateful for all of the experiences that have shaped my career and world-view, ranging from my tenure at Delta to serving as CEO at Feeding America, the largest domestic hunger relief organization in the United States at the time. I’ve also shared experiences with mentors, such as Doris Christopher, founder of Pampered Chef, who first introduced me to Opportunity International. There have been many people who have guided me throughout my journey, including my colleagues today and clients we serve in Africa and around the world, most of whom are budding entrepreneurs creating their own destinies in the emerging markets where Opportunity International operates.
I’ve been privileged to have the experiences that led me to Opportunity International. Together with our extraordinary global team, I’m helping develop a multifaceted, practical and highly effective social impact initiatives across the developing world.
Opportunity International emphasizes education in the emerging markets in which it operates – How important is education to empowering African communities?
Let’s look at the startling facts – There are presently 263 million children out of school around the world, according to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). Roughly 60 percent are in Sub-Saharan Africa and most of those boys and girls will never set foot in a classroom. 758 million adults in the world are illiterate and two-thirds of them, for a multitude of reasons that vary from country to country, are women.
The consequences of this severe deficit are frankly, dire and tragically, cyclical. A lack of education begets a lack of opportunity, a lack of lasting employment and the inability to educate your children, which ensures such a vicious cycle continues. It creates a knowledge vacuum that can be filled with a detrimental curriculum and in some cases, radical indoctrination. It begets poverty in the extreme, including starvation, leaving crime as the only way to provide for one’s family.
Now, let’s look at the impact of an education. Statistically, you are less likely to be poor with a quality education; families with an educated head of household are 18-22 percent less likely to be poor than those with an illiterate head of household. One extra year in primary school boosts wages by 10 to 20 percent. And regarding women and education, our data indicates that when 10 percent more girls go to school in a given emerging economy, that country’s GDP grows by at least 3 percent.
That’s why Opportunity International is focusing a high level of resources and attention on education.
Through our work, we know there are 5 major reasons why kids aren’t in school: 1) they can’t afford it; 2) it’s too far away; 3) low quality; 4) family crisis like disease, disability or the death of parent or caregiver; and 5) lack of relevance (education not matched to local employment needs).
Our Education program is addressing those barriers by providing loans to help parents pay tuition, buy books and pay other school expenses, and school improvement loans to help school proprietors build and expand schools. We also provide child savings accounts and youth financial education in schools to teach children how to manage their finances. In addition, we offer insurance products so children have the resources to stay in school even in the event of a family crisis. And we provide training to school proprietors to help them improve the quality of education through new teaching methods, better teaching aids and training, and mentoring.
As a result, we’ve helped 1.5 million children in 10 African countries stay in school. Our goal is to help another 5 million children over the next 5 years.
What are some of the challenges and opportunities in microfinance and its deployment across Africa?
There is no ‘One Size Fits All’ model to operating on the African continent. There are always challenges when you implement groundbreaking programmes that are unprecedented in the environments where you look to affect change. However, these are speed bumps that Opportunity International has been able to overcome with efficiency, in part accomplished through our commitment as a social enterprise for good and likewise with the backing of our global partners. For example, our collaboration with MyBucks, a leading African FinTech enterprise, coupled with the generosity and creative ingenuity of a recent $1 million USD grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, will allow us build a sustainable solution to achieving inclusive and equitable quality education for all to better serve the communities in Uganda, a program which we aim to replicate across the continent.
Where many see challenge, we perpetually see opportunity.
Lastly, where do you envision Opportunity International and its offering in Africa five years from now?
Where I could talk about our expanding beyond the markets in which we now operate and our receptiveness to new and long-lasting partnerships in the future, all of which are fundamental to our growth, I’d like to look at Opportunity International through the prism of client growth. That is to say, five years from now, we would like to have educated 5 million children; we’d like to enhance our portfolio of agribusiness educational programmes and entrepreneurs in that vibrant industry, especially pertinent today, given periodic commodity crises in certain countries.
Many people think eliminating extreme poverty is impossible but I’m here to tell you that we can actually make poverty history in our lifetime—if we work together.
The World Bank agrees, citing research that shows the percentage of people living on less than U.S. $1.90 a day can be reduced to 3 percent by 2030. Working with others also committed to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Opportunity International will continue to invest philanthropic and social impact capital to spark and scale innovative solutions to one of the most pressing issues of our time—ending extreme poverty. That is Opportunity International’s mission. We work hard every day to make that a reality.
It’s in our hands to create such lasting change.