This funding will help to protect the chimpanzee population in Kibale National Park in Uganda by supporting 1,890 local community members, who might otherwise have depended on illegal poaching and lumbering to provide for their families, to start small enterprises. It will also fund anti-poaching patrols and the removal of snares.

The project has already trained 3,823 entrepreneurs with skills on how to start microenterprises, develop savings habits, and on the value of conservation. The training has resulted in the creation of 1,077 conservation-friendly microenterprises by local entrepreneurs, including retail and grocery shops, agribusinesses, animal husbandry, and even beekeeping.

As a consequence of these microenterprises, 20,180 individuals have been supported onto a sustainable pathway out of extreme poverty, as well as reduced hunting and habitat destruction in Kibale National Park. It also resulted in 824 snares being removed from the park.

Supporting households to generate sustainable incomes

The new grant will enable Village Enterprise to train a further 1,890 entrepreneurs living in extreme poverty through a one-year program which will provide them with the seed capital, mentoring, and business and financial literacy training they need to establish microenterprises that are conservation-friendly.

As part of the program, Village Enterprise has already helped establish 109 savings groups, which are small communities of fellow entrepreneurs who help encourage each other to put away savings on a weekly basis. The new funding will allow for 42 new business savings groups to be created. These savings groups also allow entrepreneurs to have access to greater capital through loans that they can use to expand their enterprises or in case of emergency.

The program empowers the new entrepreneurs to generate an increased and more consistent income for their households, establish a sustainable pathway out of extreme poverty, and become less – and eventually no-longer – reliant on the need for income generated via illegal hunting or lumbering inside of Kibale National Park.

Snare removal and anti-poaching patrols

The grant will also enable the Ngogo Chimpanzee Project to operate eight two-person anti-poaching patrol teams in the Kibale National Park area. These patrols will remove snares, deterring individuals from hunting and destroying habitat by illegal logging activities. In addition, the grant will provide the margins of the park with two patrol teams which will reduce crop raiding and improve community relations with the park.

To strengthen the climate and conservation pillar of the project, one member from each business savings group is selected as a conservation champion. These champions are then trained on conservation practices and create tailored plans for their communities that support the protection of wildlife and ecosystems.

Dianne Calvi, CEO and President of Village Enterprise, commented:

“Thanks to the Arcus Foundation, Village Enterprise will be able to transform the lives of even more people living in extreme poverty near Kibale National Park, while also protecting the park’s vital ecosystems and one of the largest remaining populations of East African chimpanzees.

In order for conservation efforts to truly succeed, we can’t take away an individual’s ability to earn an income, especially when they are living in extreme poverty. We need more projects like PARKS that foster both conservation and the entrepreneurial spirit. By providing individuals with the training to become entrepreneurs, we are offering them a sustainable alternative to generate income, increase their savings, and eliminate their reliance on illegal hunting or deforestation. Ultimately, this is how we can safeguard nature, protect endangered species, and end extreme poverty.”

Media enquiries:

Village Enterprise – villageenterprise@wearesevenhills.com

Notes to editors:

Find out more about Village Enterprise’s work here.

About Village Enterprise

Village Enterprise’s mission is to end extreme poverty in rural Africa through entrepreneurship, innovation, and collective action. We work with vulnerable women, refugees, and youth who are most impacted by climate change, conflict, and displacement, and equip them with skills and resources to launch climate-smart businesses, build savings, and put themselves and their families onto a sustainable path out of extreme poverty. Village Enterprise has started over 80,000 businesses, trained over 274,000 first-time entrepreneurs, and positively transformed the lives of over 1,656,000 people in Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda, Ethiopia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Congo-Brazzaville, Mozambique, and Tanzania.

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•   The grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is expected to impact over 4,000 lives in Kenya and empower the launch of 240 businesses

•   Funding will also allow Village Enterprise to lay the foundation for three county governments in Kenya to manage poverty graduation programs

SAN CARLOS, Calif., February 29, 2024 — Village Enterprise, the nonprofit seeking to end extreme poverty in rural Africa through entrepreneurship, innovation, and collective action, today announces a $1.5 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

The grant will fund two new strategic initiatives in Kenya to sustainably scale Village Enterprise’s proven poverty graduation model through collective action. The aim of the project is to strengthen partnerships with county governments, empowering them to independently manage graduation programs. It also aims to work with private sector businesses to better link entrepreneurs to markets through the award-winning DREAMS model.

Empowering local delivery of poverty graduation

Village Enterprise will work closely with three county governments in Kenya—Makueni, Taita Taveta, and West Pokot—to develop and implement clear poverty graduation policies, build the capacity of government officials to manage the programs, and develop an integrated monitoring system to track graduation program participants efficiently.

The aim is to lay the groundwork for county governments to independently manage and scale graduation programs to help more people lift themselves out of extreme poverty.

Building private sector networks

In addition, Village Enterprise will pilot its innovative Delivering Resilient Enterprises and Market Systems (DREAMS) model, developed with Mercy Corps, in Garissa County of Kenya. The targeted outcomes for the initiative include training 720 people living in extreme poverty to become first-time entrepreneurs who will launch 240 new businesses in groups of three. These new businesses will positively impact the lives of 4,800 people living in extreme poverty.

This is the first time the DREAMS approach will be tested in Kenya after successful implementation in Ethiopia and Uganda. It is also the first time DREAMS will target and work with general populations living in extreme poverty, as the model has previously been implemented with refugee populations living in settlements. DREAMS aims to link graduation program participants not just to markets but also to private sector actors like financial institutions, and agriculture input providers. If successful, it could demonstrate a sustainable model for integrating graduation with market systems and the private sector that could be replicated across sub-Saharan Africa.

Dianne Calvi, CEO and President of Village Enterprise, commented:

“This generous grant will allow us to demonstrate how our graduation approach can be scaled sustainably through partnerships with local governments and private sector actors to transform the lives of families living in extreme poverty in rural Africa. We are very grateful to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for their investment in these two strategic initiatives in Kenya to end extreme poverty through collective action. ”

Media enquiries

Village Enterprise – villageenterprise@wearesevenhills.com 

Notes to editors

Find out more about Village Enterprise’s work here.

About Village Enterprise

Village Enterprise’s mission is to end extreme poverty in rural Africa through entrepreneurship, innovation, and collective action. We work with vulnerable women, refugees, and youth who are most impacted by climate change, conflict, and displacement, and equip them with skills and resources to launch climate-smart businesses, build savings, and put themselves and their families onto a sustainable path out of extreme poverty. Village Enterprise has started over 80,000 businesses, trained over 274,000 first-time entrepreneurs, and positively transformed the lives of over 1,656,000 people in Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda, Ethiopia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Congo-Brazzaville, Mozambique, and Tanzania.

The post New Funding for Strategic Initiatives to End Extreme Poverty appeared first on Village Enterprise.

SAN CARLOS, Calif., December 13, 2023 — A new program that trains refugees, displaced by the Somali civil war, to become entrepreneurs and start their own small businesses has launched within the Kobe, Hilaweyn, and Melkadida refugee camps in Ethiopia.

Village Enterprise, the nonprofit seeking to end extreme poverty in rural Africa through entrepreneurship, innovation, and collective action, is expanding its DREAMS for Refugees program following success in refugee settlements in Uganda.

DREAMS (Delivering Resilient Enterprises and Market Systems) for Refugees is a partnership that merges Village Enterprise’s poverty graduation program with Mercy Corps’ expertise in market systems development to equip refugees with the skills, resources, and market-linkages to start sustainable businesses and graduate from extreme poverty. DREAMS has been operating in Uganda since 2022, and the expansion to Ethiopia is supported by donations from the IKEA Foundation and the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation.

DREAMS will impact more than 200,000 lives in Ethiopia and Uganda. Photo credit: Ezra Millstein for Mercy Corps.

The Kobe, Hilaweyn, and Melkadida refugee camps are located near the southern border of Ethiopia and home to approximately 130,000 refugees. As DREAMS launches in Ethiopia, it is providing the first cohort of 1,200 refugee entrepreneurs living in extreme poverty with seed funding of $500 to start their own businesses. Having fled war in Somalia, with little prospect of being able to return, the first-time entrepreneurs are also receiving comprehensive training delivered by Village Enterprise’s expert business mentors. Over a nine week training course, the entrepreneurs develop skills such as financial literacy, bookkeeping, and creating business plans to support them to launch their enterprises.

In Bidi Bidi Refugee Settlement and Rhino Camp Refugee Settlement in Uganda, DREAMS has trained 4,800 entrepreneurs to date. Working in groups of three, these first-time entrepreneurs have launched successful businesses in areas such as retail, livestock, and agriculture. In total across both Uganda and Ethiopia, DREAMS will reach more than 33,000 households and impact more than 200,000 lives.

The DREAMS model is aiming to transform refugee relief. Traditional support for refugees is based on providing basic subsistence, such as food rations or shelter, rather than creating opportunities for people to become self-reliant. DREAMS won the Larsen Lam ICONIQ Impact Award for Refugees in 2021 and is part of Village Enterprise’s broader goal of lifting 20 million people in rural Africa out of extreme poverty by 2030.

With 400 million people in Africa now living in extreme poverty, poverty alleviation solutions that work are more important than ever. Refugees are facing more acute challenges than at any other point since World War II, with approximately 6.6 million refugees living in camps globally. What are initially established as temporary measures to accommodate an influx of people seeking a safe haven, refugee camps often become protracted settlements.

Dianne Calvi, CEO and President of Village Enterprise, said:
“The expansion of DREAMS into Ethiopia is a great step forward in addressing two of the biggest challenges facing the world today—forced displacement and extreme poverty. With refugee numbers at record levels, as well as increases in food prices and decreases in aid budgets, it’s more important than ever that we are providing sustainable solutions and equipping refugees with the training, resources, and markets to become self-reliant.

We are proud that this program will help empower so many refugees in Ethiopia to rebuild their lives, and in partnership with Mercy Corps, we’re looking for more foundations and individuals to join us so that DREAMS can reach even more vulnerable families and communities across Africa.”

Tjada D’Oyen McKenna, CEO of Mercy Corps, said: “As conflicts around the world become more complex and protracted, displacement is now measured in decades rather than months or years. The system that was designed to provide urgent, lifesaving assistance in response to short-term displacement has struggled to serve millions of refugees who have put their aspirations on hold. Refugees deserve better. We’re thrilled to expand DREAMS to Ethiopia in partnership with Village Enterprise and to support refugees and the communities in which they live to thrive.”

Per Heggenes, CEO of the IKEA Foundation, said: “People who are forced to flee need the chance to rebuild their lives so they can support themselves and their families. We’ve seen firsthand that refugees have extraordinary talent and drive. We’re proud to support DREAMS to empower these communities to find pathways toward economic self-reliance.”

Barri Shorey, Senior Program Officer, Refugees at the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, said: “We’re thrilled to support the expansion of the DREAMS program for refugees and host communities in Ethiopia. This partnership between Village Enterprise and Mercy Corps targets families who have been displaced from their homes and supports them on their challenging journeys to financial security. In a time of increasing and longer-term displacement, we are excited to invest in solutions that support refugee households to actually envision and build a healthy and productive future for themselves and their children.”

Media enquiries:
Village Enterprise – villageenterprise@wearesevenhills.com

About Village Enterprise
Village Enterprise’s mission is to end extreme poverty in rural Africa through entrepreneurship, innovation, and collective action. We work with vulnerable women, refugees, and youth who are most impacted by climate change, conflict, and displacement, and equip them with skills and resources to launch climate-smart businesses, build savings, and put themselves and their families onto a sustainable path out of extreme poverty. Village Enterprise has started over 80,000 businesses, trained over 274,000 first-time entrepreneurs, and positively transformed the lives of over 1,656,000 people in Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda, Ethiopia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Congo-Brazzaville, Mozambique, and Tanzania. Learn more at villageenterprise.org.

About Mercy Corps
Mercy Corps is a global team of nearly 6,000 humanitarians working to create a world where everyone can prosper. In more than 40 countries affected by crisis, disaster, poverty and climate change we work alongside communities, local governments, forward-thinking corporations and social entrepreneurs to meet urgent needs and develop long-term solutions to make lasting change possible. Learn more at www.mercycorps.org.

About the IKEA Foundation
The IKEA Foundation is a strategic philanthropy that focuses its grant making efforts on tackling the two biggest threats to children’s futures: poverty and climate change. It currently grants more than €200 million per year to help improve family incomes and quality of life while protecting the planet from climate change. Since 2009, the IKEA Foundation has granted more than €1.5 billion to create a better future for children and their families.

In 2021 the Board of the IKEA Foundation decided to make an additional €1 billion available over the next five years to accelerate the reduction of Greenhouse Gas emissions.

Learn more at: www.ikeafoundation.org or by following them on LinkedIn or Twitter.

About the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation
International hotelier Conrad N. Hilton established the grantmaking foundation that bears his name in 1944 to help people living in poverty and experiencing disadvantage worldwide. Today, the work continues, concentrating on efforts to ensure healthy early childhood development and sustainable livelihoods for youth, support young people transitioning out of foster care, improve access to housing and support services for people experiencing homelessness, identify solutions to safe water access, and lift the work of Catholic sisters. Additionally, following selection by an independent, international jury, the Foundation annually awards the $2.5 million Conrad N. Hilton Humanitarian Prize to an organization doing extraordinary work to reduce human suffering. The Foundation is one of the world’s largest, with approximately $6.7 billion in assets. It has awarded grants to date totaling more than $3 billion, $435 million worldwide in 2022. Please visit www.hiltonfoundation.org for more information.

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•  The grant will impact over 30,000 households in Rwanda, and empower the launch of 10,000 group businesses

•  The innovative poverty graduation program will equip the Rwandan government with the tools and resources needed to scale Village Enterprise’s evidence-based and cost-effective model across Rwanda

SAN CARLOS, Calif., November 16, 2023 — Village Enterprise, a nonprofit seeking to end extreme poverty in rural Africa through entrepreneurship, innovation, and collective action, has received a $6.5 million grant from the United States Agency for International Development’s Development Innovation Ventures (USAID DIV) program. Through DIV, USAID funds breakthrough solutions to the world’s toughest development challenges, and their grant will support the scaling of Village Enterprise’s poverty graduation model in Rwanda.

The second largest grant in DIV’s history and the largest in over a decade will enable Village Enterprise to provide critical resources, training, and skills to people living in extreme poverty and support them to set up their own businesses. The grant will also allow Village Enterprise to train government staff to implement Village Enterprise’s poverty graduation model independently, as well as set up a management information system to be utilized by the Government of Rwanda to track and monitor the program’s progress.

Under this results-based award, Village Enterprise will also work with the Government of Rwanda to catalyze an additional $28 million in funding to further scale the program. These additional resources will be used to move more than one million Rwandans out of extreme poverty by 2027 and end extreme poverty in the country by 2030. If successful, this model could be a blueprint for other African governments to eradicate extreme poverty.

Pelagie is an entrepreneur from Rwanda who graduated from Village Enterprise’s poverty graduation program earlier this year. She’s pictured here alongside her three children who she’s been able to send to school with her business profits.

Village Enterprise’s transformative approach

Through the award, Village Enterprise will use their proven poverty graduation model to empower over 30,000 households in Rwanda to set up, launch, and run their own businesses. Ranging from retail businesses in clothing and produce, to bicycle repair businesses, the new entrepreneurs are mentored by Village Enterprise’s specialist staff throughout the year-long program and receive business and financial literacy training.

Supporting Rwanda to eliminate extreme poverty

The Rwandan government has committed to eliminating extreme poverty by 2030 and ratified its National Strategy for Sustainable Graduation (NSSG) in November of 2022. As part of the roll-out of the program, Village Enterprise’s specialist staff will work alongside the Government of Rwanda, training government parasocial workers and teaching them how to be successful mentors to first-time entrepreneurs. Long term, this will enable Rwanda to deliver the poverty graduation program without the support or intervention from Village Enterprise or USAID funding. In addition, the grant will be used to develop and deploy a management information system, allowing the Rwandan government to monitor and track its progress as it continues to scale the poverty graduation program.

Dianne Calvi, CEO and President of Village Enterprise said: “Village Enterprise is thrilled to receive USAID DIV’s largest grant in over a decade and to work alongside the Government of Rwanda to equip vulnerable households to break the cycle of extreme poverty through entrepreneurship. It’s through collective action and scaling proven solutions that governments, nonprofits, agencies, and the private sector can take on the biggest issues in the world today. This grant and partnership not only have the potential to help end extreme poverty in Rwanda—they can serve as the blueprint for other African governments looking to end extreme poverty.”

“Our poverty graduation model has a proven record of success. It has the potential to transform the lives of millions of individuals and families living in extreme poverty, and it is with thanks to USAID that we can roll-out our program in Rwanda to foster more entrepreneurship, innovation, and collective action,” says Sylvere Mwizerwa, Rwanda Country Manager at Village Enterprise.

About Village Enterprise

Village Enterprise’s mission is to end extreme poverty in rural Africa through entrepreneurship, innovation, and collective action. We work with vulnerable women, refugees, and youth who are most impacted by climate change, conflict, and displacement, and equip them with skills and resources to launch climate-smart businesses, build savings, and put themselves and their families onto a sustainable path out of extreme poverty. Village Enterprise has started over 80,000 businesses, trained over 274,000 first-time entrepreneurs, and positively transformed the lives of over 1,656,000 people in Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda, Ethiopia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Congo-Brazzaville, Mozambique, and Tanzania.

About USAID

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is the world’s premier international development agency and a catalytic actor driving development results. USAID’s work advances U.S. national security and economic prosperity, demonstrates American generosity, and promotes a path to recipient self-reliance and resilience.

This press release is made possible by the support of the American people through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The contents are the sole responsibility of Village Enterprise and do not necessarily reflect the views of USAID or the United States Government.

Contact

Brett Slezak, Vice President of Marketing and Communications
bretts@villageenterprise.org | +1 (254) 541-7250

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