Draft:Village Enterprise

• Comment: Your lead section's very first sentences are attributed to poor sources (cf. footnotes 1 and 2). This is not acceptable and presents a strong decline reason. Now, please be aware that you should have a general look at your references, i.e., whether the cited sources are really high-quality sources. Asses your sources! Check whether they are citable. Something else of note is, for example, footnote 3: It refers to a BBC radio programme, almost 18 minutes in length. In general, citing such sources is acceptable, however, I strongly recommend you add timestamps to your citation. It makes it a lot easier to asses the source. In fact, I have spent 5 minutes listening at double speed, only to figure that the important pieces of information are found at ca. 05:30 (list of countries) and ca. 09:30 ("Village Enterprise has helped nearly 300,000 people"). Despite the fact that the BBC programme is largely based on interviews, I would deem it source contributing towards (because I reckon it is safe to say that it has gone through an editorial process at BBC). In other contexts, however, interviews may not contribute towards notability. Best, --Johannes (Talk) (Contribs) (Articles) 12:43, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

• Comment: Remove primary sources as explained here. Safari Scribe^{Edits! Talk!} 14:11, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

---

This page is about the nonprofit organization. For the educational program known as Enterprise Village, see Stavros Institute.

Village Enterprise

Founded	1987 (1987)
Focus	Economic development
Location	San Carlos, California, US
Area served	Africa
Method	Graduation Approach
Key people	Dianne Calvi (CEO) Katie Boland (Chair of the Board of Directors) Brian Lehnen (Co-founder) Joan Hestenes (Co-founder)
Staff	440+
Website	www.villageenterprise.org

Village Enterprise is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that equips the most vulnerable women, refugees, and youth living in extreme poverty in Africa to launch sustainable businesses and break the cycle of poverty. Its mission is to “end extreme poverty in rural Africa through entrepreneurship, innovation, and collective action.”

As of 2024, Village Enterprise has helped nearly 300,000 people living in extreme poverty in Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda, Ethiopia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Congo-Brazzaville, Mozambique, and Tanzania to become entrepreneurs, and 83% of these entrepreneurs are women.

How it works

The Village Enterprise poverty graduation model is a one-year graduation approach that targets households living below the international poverty line and provides: access to a savings group, business training, startup cash, and business mentoring. The startup cash provided is a seed capital grant ranging from US$180 to US$300 given to groups of three entrepreneurs who launch a business together. The positive impacts of the graduation approach and the rigorous evidence that supports it were highlighted by Nicholas Kristof in his 2015 New York Times article “The Power of Hope is Real.”

A randomized controlled trial published in 2022 by IDinsight found the Village Enterprise program had a positive and statistically significant impact on both indicators it measured: monthly consumption and net assets. It also estimated the Village Enterprise program to have a 534% lifetime benefit-cost ratio, meaning for every $1 invested into the program, $5.34 of income is generated by their entrepreneurs. A previous randomized controlled trial by Innovations for Poverty Action that was published in 2018 and written about in Vox found that the Village Enterprise program led to increases in consumption, assets, income, as well as improvements in nutrition and subjective wellbeing of business owners and their families.

History

Village Enterprise was co-founded in 1987 by Brian Lehnen and Joan Hestenes to show how "entrepreneurship can help the very poor create businesses and experience the dignity of long-lasting jobs."

Village Enterprise hired its first outside CEO, Dianne Calvi, in 2010. Because of her impact at Village Enterprise, Calvi was honored with the President’s Award for the Advancement of the Common Good from Stanford University in 2023.

In 2017, Village Enterprise launched a Development Impact Bond (DIB), the first for poverty alleviation in sub-Saharan Africa. When the results were released in 2022, the Village Enterprise DIB was shown to have succeeded, despite being implemented during the Covid-19 pandemic. The randomized controlled trial conducted by IDinsight estimated the program would generate lifetime impacts of more than $21 million for communities, around four times the overall cost of the project.

Recognition

In 2021, Village Enterprise was named a winner of the Larsen Lam ICONIQ Impact Award for Refugees for its DREAMS (Delivering Resilient Enterprises and Market Systems) model. DREAMS combines Village Enterprise's poverty graduation program and Mercy Corps' market systems development approach. In 2023, Village Enterprise and Mercy Corps were awarded Fast Company's World Changing Ideas Award for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa for DREAMS.

Also in 2023, Village Enterprise received a $7 million donation from philanthropist MacKenzie Scott. That same year, the Kenyan newspaper Daily Nation published an article about the impacts of Village Enterprise's work on an entrepreneur named Salome Lodis.

In 2024, Village Enterprise's work in the Bidibidi Refugee Settlement was featured on BBC World Service and NPR's Marketplace Morning Report. The 17-minute story from the BBC featured interviews with three refugees who had launched businesses in the settlement through Village Enterprise and were better providing for their children and families.

As of July 2, 2024, Village Enterprise is the only charity of the 225,000 evaluated to receive a perfect score from Charity Navigator, and they have also received a platinum seal of transparency from Candid.