Recently, Jane Goodall was on NPR’s Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me

This made me think of the work Village Enterprise has done with the Jane Goodall Institute.

Located in the north of Africa’s important Albertine Rift region, the Budongo Forest Reserve is one of western Uganda’s critical chimpanzee habitats with roughly 800 chimpanzees (2009 census). Threats include both illegal activities and local poverty which forces people to supplement their incomes with forest products. Often, programs that attempt to address both conservation and poverty alleviation fail to reach the poor on a large scale.

Village Enterprise is committed to integrating conservation thinking and sustainability practices into its microenterprise model in order to protect the biodiversity of the Budongo Forest and chimpanzees, and to lift the poverty burdens of the adjacent villages.

With this vision of empowered communities, Village Enterprise and the Jane Goodall Institute launched a partnership in 2007 to create an innovative model adding a conservation perspective to every aspect of Village Enterprise’s proven micro-enterprise model.

Caroline Bernadi
Foundation Director