2024 was our biggest year yet.
From scaling our poverty graduation program across rural Africa to becoming the only international nonprofit in the world with a perfect 100%, 4-star rating from Charity Navigator, our team soared to new heights in 2024! We’ve highlighted 10 of our biggest achievements from this past year below, and we hope that these provide a glimpse into the life-changing transformation happening for the remarkable women, refugees, and youth who we serve.
1. More than 2 million lives transformed—including over 312,000 in the past year alone
We’re proud to share that Village Enterprise transformed more lives in a single year than ever before—over 312,000. As a result, we’ve now impacted more than 2 million lives all time, and we’re on pace for another record-breaking year in 2025.
2. Partnering with local governments to end poverty with funding from the Gates Foundation
Over the past year, Village Enterprise has worked closely with three county governments in Kenya—Makueni, Taita Taveta, and West Pokot—to create poverty graduation policies and programs that can be independently managed by these counties. Not only have all three counties fully approved their poverty graduation policies, they have recently committed $2 million of their own funds to support their poverty graduation programs. Read our Press Release.
3. Catalytic funding to end extreme poverty in Rwanda from USAID DIV and France’s FID
In July, the Fund for Innovation in Development announced a $1.3 million grant for Village Enterprise’s work in Rwanda. This funding adds to a $6.5 million grant from USAID’s Development Innovation Ventures that was awarded at the end of 2023. Together, these grants co-finance Village Enterprise’s partnership with the Government of Rwanda to end extreme poverty, providing the catalyzing support in our efforts to lift over 4.6 million Rwandans out of extreme poverty by 2035. Read our Press Release.
4. Reducing child malnutrition in northern Kenya
In a region long prone to devastating droughts and food insecurity, Village Enterprise has new evidence that our model is reducing child malnutrition. Working closely with Catholic Relief Services on USAID Nawiri, our model reduced the chronic rates of acute malnutrition in children under five years old from 36% to just 4% for our most recent cohort of entrepreneurs. In total, our work on USAID Nawiri has reached over 20,000 children under the age of five and transformed more than 100,000 lives. This success has created the opportunity to expand our partnership with CRS to other countries and projects, including #5!
5. Building resilience and improving food security in Madagascar with Catholic Relief Services
Building off our partnership and success on USAID Nawiri, Village Enterprise and CRS learned in late 2024 that we’ve received funding to expand our work to Madagascar to train more than 50,000 entrepreneurs and transform over 325,000 lives. We will be sharing more about this exciting new project soon!
6. Reaching the most vulnerable in Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda through DREAMS
We greatly expanded our impactful DREAMS initiative beyond the refugee settlements in Uganda and Ethiopia. Thanks to funding from a generous anonymous donor, Village Enterprise and Mercy Corps launched DREAMS in Tanzania in 2024, working with naturalized citizens who were originally refugees from Burundi. DREAMS also expanded to Kenya this past year with funding from the Gates Foundation to serve general populations living in extreme poverty in Garissa County.
7. Protecting the environment and scaling our partnership with Wildlife Conservation Society
After a decades-long partnership with WCS, we announced the scaling up of our work together in October to address extreme poverty and wildlife conservation. In order to better support vulnerable communities living near protected areas in sub-Saharan Africa, Village Enterprise and WCS are equipping them with the resources and training to launch climate-friendly businesses and involving them in conservation efforts. Read our Press Release.
8. Safeguarding endangered chimpanzees and reducing extreme poverty in Uganda
On Earth Day, we announced a $450,000 grant from the Arcus Foundation to expand our PARKS project into more communities around Kibale National Park in Uganda. To date, PARKS has trained 3,823 entrepreneurs, transformed the lives of more than 20,000 people living in extreme poverty, and helped safeguard endangered chimpanzees from poaching and habitat destruction. The extension will equip 1,890 more entrepreneurs to launch climate-smart businesses and transform an additional 12,600 lives. Read our Press Release.
9. Revolutionizing microbusiness development through digital solutions
We scaled the digital savings app DreamSave to be used by over 9,200 entrepreneurs in Kenya, Rwanda, and Uganda in 2024. DreamSave allows our entrepreneurs to digitally track their savings records using a smartphone instead of paper books, and we’ve found it increases savings by 50%. On top of this, we also began to pilot our latest innovation, SPRINT, which allows our business mentors to equip five times as many entrepreneurs (1,800) in a single year through a digitally enhanced model.
10. Pioneering innovative financing to transform international development
In October, Village Enterprise’s social impact became available on Common Good Marketplace, making it Africa’s first-ever poverty impact assets to be listed on a social outcomes marketplace. Similar to how carbon credits operate, Common Good Marketplace allows corporations to purchase verified impact assets that are making progress on the United Nations’ SDGs, and sales of Village Enterprise’s impact will directly fund our future work, allowing us to equip even more women, refugees, and youth living in extreme poverty to become business owners. Read our Press Release.
Village Enterprise made headlines in 2024
On top of all of this, Village Enterprise was featured on BBC World Service Radio, Newsweek, the World Economic Forum, and more! Check out some of our top press coverage from this past year by clicking the logos below.
To discover more articles and media coverage, visit our Press Room.
Thank you to all of our supporters who helped make 2024 our biggest year to date, and we can’t wait to go even further together in 2025!