Village Enterprise Graduation Model
MLC Vanguard | Created by Village Enterprise
Village Enterprise’s community-based, participatory, year-long poverty Graduation program reflects a bottom-up approach to microenterprise development. Designed for persons living in rural East Africa, on less than $1.90 per day, the program equips them with the necessary resources to start a small, sustainable business and savings group.
1,240,000 Lives Impacted
On average, 95.8% of businesses graduate from the Village Enterprise program. Overall, Village Enterprise’s internal results show an increase in the household savings of participants of 311% at program exit. As a result, program participants saw a 71% increase in annual household consumption & expenditure as a proxy for income. They also saw a 144% increase in weekly animal protein intake and a 21% increase in daily meal consumptions.
Our innovation yields particularly dramatic impacts for women, who make up 75-80% of our program participants. Sub-analysis has indicated that female headed households benefited even more than households with male participants in regards to increases in total asset ownership and consumption. Additionally, women participating in the Village Enterprise program reported increased standing in the community and subjective well-being including improved mental health and overall sense of well-being.
The Innovation
With over 30 years of experience as a pioneer to end extreme poverty in rural Africa, Village Enterprise’s ‘Poverty Graduation program’ (targeting, training, savings groups, seed funding, and mentoring) provides participants a path to sustainable and profitable enterprises by combining highly effective targeting with a group-based business creation program featuring cash initial grants, financial literacy training, ongoing mentoring, and the formation of savings groups.
Village Enterprise uses human-centered design methodology to adapt our program to different contexts and demographics, such as working with youth and refugees. An early adopter of new technologies, Village Enterprise has incorporated mobile technology to monitor, evaluate, and deliver elements of our program, including our adaptive management system, our mobile cash disbursement, and our digital training tools.
Our recently completed large-scale, independent, three-year Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT) with Innovations for Poverty Action, shows solid evidence that our Graduation program is a cost-effective, scalable, and sustainable solution to increase the income and savings of people living in extreme poverty.
Implemented in
Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Democratic Republic of Congo, Tanzania
Get in touch
Kayleigh Mencia, Grants Manager
About Village Enterprise
Since inception in 1987, Village Enterprise has evolved into a leading organization in the poverty alleviation sector aiming to end extreme poverty in rural Africa through entrepreneurship and innovation. We are an African-led team which envisions a world free of extreme poverty, where people have the means to sustain their families. We are driven by data, consistent evaluation of our programs, and commitment to improving our program through human-centered design and lean impact approaches.
With our goal to transform 20 million lives by 2030, we are constantly evolving our organization to ensure that we have best practices in place and remain at the forefront of the poverty alleviation sector.
