Kenya
We envision Kenya forever free of extreme poverty
With over three decades of experience in Kenya, Village Enterprise works in partnership with the Kenyan national and county governments, foundations, and NGOs to scale our program and further our impact.
Our Impact in Kenya
154887
Entrepreneurs trained
47775
Businesses started
982111
Lives transformed
Strategic Projects in Kenya
Partnering with Local Governments
Village Enterprise is working with the county governments of Makueni, Taita Taveta, and West Pokot to develop clear poverty graduation policies and build the capacity of government officials to manage poverty graduation programs. The partnerships with these three counties also include creating a management information system in each county to measure the impact of the programs on the lives of participants and improve the program’s effectiveness with data-driven decision making. This important work is building a foundation for the counties to independently implement and scale graduation programs, ultimately helping their most vulnerable citizens to become business owners and lift themselves out of extreme poverty. This project is made possible through funding from the Gates Foundation.
DREAMS
Delivering Resilient Enterprises and Market Systems (DREAMS) is an award-winning model that combines Village Enterprise’s poverty graduation program with Mercy Corps’ expertise in market systems development to better equip Africa’s most vulnerable populations to get out of extreme poverty. First launched in the Bidi Bidi Refugee Settlement in northern Uganda in 2018, DREAMS expanded to Kenya in 2024 with funding from the Gates Foundation to work with households living in extreme poverty in Garissa County.
Learn more about DREAMS
USAID Nawiri
For decades, the pastoral communities of northern Kenya have faced high rates of extreme poverty, food insecurity, and acute child malnutrition. To address these issues and reduce the chronic rates of acute child malnutrition in children under the age of five, Village Enterprise worked with Catholic Relief Services on USAID Nawiri. We adapted our poverty graduation program by layering it with nutrition education and counseling, as well as additional cash transfers for purchasing nutritious meals, medicine, and medical care. Our work transformed more than 107,000 lives, including the lives of over 24,000 children under the age of five. Results from the most recent cohort of entrepreneurs indicate that households with malnourished children dropped from 36% at the start of the program to just 4% by the end.