David Bussau, founder of Opportunity International Australia.
Abandoned at a Lower Hutt orphanage as a toddler, David Bussau went on to a stellar career in business that enabled him to “retire” at 35 – then used his tragic start in life to fuel his mission to lift millions out of poverty.
Bussau, now 84, is the founder of Opportunity International, an organisation that provides small business loans, savings, insurance and training to millions of people across the developing world.
But his own start in life wasn’t too dissimilar to those he is now helping, as he explained in an interview on Newstalk ZB’s Real Life with John Cowan that aired on Sunday night.
“I started life in Lower Hutt, in a boys’ home there, and then got moved to Masterton, a boys’ home called Sedgley,” he said.
“That’s life’s journey, you know? I think God puts you through situations that can prepare you for what he has purposed for your life.”
Having been cut off from his parents and family during childhood, at 15 Bussau left Sedgley to face the world on his own – and quickly discovered a natural affinity for entrepreneurship.
“It was a very good start in learning how to be self-sufficient and independent,” he told Real Life.
“I started off with a hot dog stand outside a football stadium in Masterton – I bought a franchise off someone there and then grew that to two hot dog stands. I then went through a series of small businesses: a home cookery, then a biscuit factory, then bike manufacturing, then food distribution.”
Bussau says he doesn’t know why his businesses grew so well, “but they did”.
“The only strategy I had was that I would buy potential and sell potential – so I’d buy something which I thought had business, that I thought had potential, and then grow it and sell it to someone else who could take it to the next stage.
“That was the way of growing my capital base.”
In his mid-20s, Bussau and his wife Carol jumped the ditch to Australia and, after a friend in the construction industry had been declared bankrupt, bought his business off him before setting up a few complementary companies within the same sector.
The businesses boomed – and by 30, Bussau was a millionaire.
But growing wealth for his own gain was losing its appeal, and Bussau started to think about how to build a life and career that enabled the flourishing of others, not just himself.
So, having made enough money by 35 that he could live off it for the rest of his life, he “retired” to focus on this new pursuit. His first opportunity came after Cyclone Tracy wreaked devastation on Darwin in 1974, killing 66 people and destroying 70% of the city’s buildings.
“The church that I was involved in had some ministries up there, so I put together a group of tradesmen and we went and tried to help people get back into their houses,” Bussau told Cowan.
“Then, the church that I was going to in Darwin had a connection to a church in Indonesia… they had just gone through an earthquake which had destroyed their church.
“So we responded to that call and my wife Carol and our two children packed our bags, hopped on a plane and walked 8km into the village, where there was no electricity, telephones, water or working toilets, and spent a few years there.”
It was during his time in Indonesia that Bussau had a chance meeting with Ketut Suwiria, a struggling Balinese farmer, and offered him a small loan of $50.
The loan was enough for Suwiria to buy a sewing machine and start a tailoring business with his wife which enabled him to repay the loan, start another business and buy a fleet of taxis, through which he was able to offer others in his community employment.
“I was pretty new in development work when I was living in Indonesia, but what I noticed was that the prevailing paradigm for aid work was what I call the Robin Hood approach: you take from the wealthy and distribute it to the poor,” Bussau said.
“It occurred to me that that probably wasn’t the most sustainable way of addressing poverty alleviation. And I guess because I was gifted to be an entrepreneur, I looked for a market approach to helping people and decided that wealth creation was a better approach and more effective.
“So I thought, how do you help people create wealth? And obviously the answer to that is they need capital and they need someone who will recognise the potential they have.”
Seeing the impact his first loan made, Bussau felt it provided a blueprint for an aid organisation that worked to actually break the cycle of poverty – and after getting a business partner on board, he launched Opportunity International.
Fast forward 50 years, and Bussau estimates Opportunity International has handed out more than 100 million loans across 26 countries.
About 98% of those loans are to women, Bussau says, because in many third-world countries, it’s men who have defaulted and the women take the responsibility to become the income earner.
“They are more responsible with whatever profits they make and put those profits back into building and sustaining the family. So we find that women are better loan recipients than men, generally.”
Incredibly, Opportunity International has just a 2.3% default rate on their loans – and Bussau says almost all defaults are a result of death or a disaster, rather than financial mismanagement.
“We try to be holistic in what we’re doing, because it’s not just the transaction of a loan which is our goal,” says Bussau. “Our goal is to transform people’s lives, so we get involved in health and education and housing and nutrition – different aspects of community development.”
Bussau has received plenty of recognition for his work helping people out of poverty – albeit mainly on the other side of the Tasman. He’s been named Senior Australian of the Year and Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year, and was awarded the Australian Order of Merit in 2001.
That said, it’s not all awards and fanfare – at various points he’s faced genuine danger as a result of his international development work, including being shot at in Soweto.
“I’ve survived some plane crashes, I’ve been pirated, I’ve been mugged more times than I can remember – life goes on,” Bussau told Real Life.
“I believe that I was put on the planet for a purpose, and that purpose is now being lived out through the different ministries that I’m involved in. I don’t see it as a calling, I see it as I’ve been pushed into what I was purposed to be on the planet.
“For me it’s a joy to be the sort of person that God intended for me to be, to journey through life and stay connected to our Creator. I think that’s where you find fulfilment in why you’re on the planet.”