• Village Enterprise impact on poverty and inequality available as “Verified Impact Assets” on Common Good Marketplace
• By quantifying and “selling” impact, digital marketplace aims to attract new funders to support progress towards Sustainable Development Goals
• Innovative new model will direct funding to most impactful development interventions
San Carlos, Calif., October 1, 2024 — Social impact achieved by Village Enterprise, the nonprofit seeking to end extreme poverty in rural Africa through entrepreneurship, is being made available to purchase on one of the world’s first digital marketplaces for impact.
On October 1st, over $2m worth of impact achieved by Village Enterprise, will be released on Common Good Marketplace for donors to bid on. The impact is measured against progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals on poverty and inequality reduction and buyers will receive a certification statement with the purchase of Verified Impact Assets (VIAs) recorded on blockchain.
Village Enterprise hopes to attract investment from businesses seeking to have a positive impact on the world that can be easily quantified and reported on. By linking investments to verifiable outcomes, impact marketplaces direct investment to the most impactful development initiatives by offering real, measurable progress and safeguards against impact washing.
The impact being sold comes from an intervention that has supported people in 1,992 households in Kenya. By supporting rural Kenyan households living in extreme poverty with training and seed funding to launch small businesses, the project sustainably increases standards of living and empowers women. The project delivered a 58% average increase in household consumption and a 74% increase in household net savings, while positively impacting a range of additional outcomes such as dietary diversity, childhood malnutrition, access to health care, psycho-social wellbeing, and women’s empowerment.
Importantly, the VIAs are priced based on the social impact the project generated, rather than the cost of the intervention. This ensures that buyers are able to accurately measure the impact of their investment and that successful interventions, that generate more impact than they cost to implement, can generate income to scale their programs.
Independent verification of impact
Village Enterprise’s poverty graduation approach has been validated by two independent, randomized controlled trials, including one in Kenya which finds a 820% benefit-cost ratio; meaning for every $1 invested in the program, $8.20 of income is generated by participants in the program.
Before the assets were listed on Common Good Marketplace, Village Enterprise’s work was independently verified by research company Moonshot Global. An audit of the project in Kenya concluded that investors should have the “highest degree of confidence about the achievement and reliability of their results.”
Celeste Brubaker said: “This is a first for Village Enterprise and an important opportunity to improve how social development interventions are funded. We believe it will help businesses better quantify their impact and access high-quality projects. It should also direct more funding to the most effective organizations and enable them to scale.
With global aid budgets shrinking, we hope digital marketplaces can help fill the gap by simplifying the process of funding effective interventions and unlocking new funding streams to help tackle the world’s biggest challenges.”
What is an impact marketplace?
Digital impact marketplaces are modeled on the market-based approach pioneered by the Voluntary Carbon Markets.
Carbon credits allow companies to purchase a quantity of carbon that can count towards their decarbonisation efforts, while directing private finance into critical climate projects, such as forest protection.
In the same way, impact marketplaces can direct private finance into the highest quality development interventions by giving certainty to donors and making it easier to measure and report on impact.
Greg Spencer, CEO of Common Good Marketplace said, “There’s been so much focus on how to solve climate change from an environmental perspective, which is absolutely needed, but what a lot of people forget is how much climate change is impacting vulnerable communities throughout the world right now. And what Village Enterprise is doing to deliver verified climate resilience impact to communities in Kenya is a model that has to be scaled to communities prone to climate shock across the world. Our marketplace has the potential to do that with amazing organizations like Village Enterprise.”
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 100,000 businesses, trained over 321,000 first-time entrepreneurs, and positively transformed the lives of over 2,031,000 people in Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda, Ethiopia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Congo-Brazzaville, Mozambique, and Tanzania.