Village Enterprise’s mission is to equip people living in extreme poverty with resources to create sustainable businesses.

Through the Budongo Forest Project in Western Uganda, a partnership with the Jane Goodall Institute, women entrepreneurs receive business and conservation training with the goal of providing sustainable livelihoods and raising environmental awareness.  This is done through their enterprise model using tools of Business, Financial, and Conservation Education, conditional seed-capital, mentoring, and savings .

With sustained funding of $45,000 over 3 years from Dining for Women, Village Enterprise will provide seed capital for 180 women-led businesses (3 women in each business), formation of 18 Business Savings Groups, and business training, mentoring, and conservation education for these women.  This will impact 540 women directly and indirectly affect 2,700 within the community.

 

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2006 Featured Grant Info

 

Project Title: Village Enterprise

Location: Uganda

Grant Amount: $4,305

Grantee Website: www.villageenterprise.org

Areas of Impact: Economic Sustainability, Leadership Development

Mission of Village Enterprise: Featured (2006), Sustained (2013-2015)
Village Enterprise's (formerly known as the Village Enterprise Fund) mission is to break the cycle of poverty by providing business training, seed capital, and ongoing mentoring to rural entrepreneurs.

Summary
Village Enterprise (VE) is committed to providing training and capital so that hard-working East Africans in need can start small businesses to provide for themselves and their families. VE has three major projects: small grants for microenterprise creation, business training and mentoring, and larger capital investment loans to small-scale projects that support a VE community or group of businesses. They work in rural areas where there are few or no jobs. About 61% if their business owners are women and VE directs DFW’s gifts to women owned businesses.

Why We Love This
VE's enterprises help three of the poorest countries in the world: Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. DFW believes in VE's efforts to empower the poor by providing creative, self-affirming venues for employment. VE funds all kinds of businesses: cash crops (maize, tomatoes, peanuts), animal husbandry (goats, chickens, pigs), tailoring, carpentry or welding and retail businesses(vegetable kiosks, restaurants, bicycle repair shops). With more income, families eat better, can pay for medical care and can afford to send more children to primary or secondary school. More than 12,000 businesses have been established and 130,000 individuals have been funded during the last 17 years.

DFW Donations: 2006-$4,305; 2007-$6,313; 2011-$38,893

Dining for Women’s donations will provide:

• Supply startup capital to 145 qualified women-led entrepreneur groups (25 people supported per business equals over 3,600 lives improved) in Uganda
• Provide formal business training necessary to launch successful enterprises, increasing 725 microentrepreneurs’ business skills and knowledge, as well as their confidence
• Provide long-term mentoring for at least a year to ensure business success
• Strengthen women’s ability to work together by providing training in conflict resolution, leadership skills, and community building
• Connect new business owners with each other through the a “cohort” training model, which facilitates peer learning and networking between women entrepreneurs