Village Enterprise  Village Enterprise (formerly known as Village Enterprise Fund) is a 501 (c) (3) nonprofit organization that works to end extreme poverty through entrepreneurship and innovation. A pioneer in the quest to help rural Africans lift themselves out of extreme poverty, Village Enterprise employs local leaders who then implement a community-based poverty graduation program that has been adapted for different contexts in Africa. Village Enterprise has trained more than 185,000 ultra-poor individuals, helped them establish over 45,000 businesses, and transformed the lives of over 1 million women children and men in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Village Enterprise plays a unique role in the poverty reduction and microenterprise development fields by successfully serving people who live below the extreme poverty level of $1.90 a day or less, especially women and youth, who are historically underserved by other NGOs. By combining highly effective targeting with group-based business creation through cash transfers, business and financial literacy training, ongoing mentoring, and access to savings groups, Village Enterprise provides participants with a sustainable path out of extreme poverty. Village Enterprise’s goal is to transform 20 million lives by 2030. Over 95% of Village Enterprise’s staff are East African and include in-country leadership in Kenya and Uganda. Village Enterprise’s staffing model was recognized in the Spring 2013, 10th Anniversary edition of the Stanford Social Innovation Review. Village Enterprise was co-founded in 1987 by Brian Lehnen and Joan Hestenes to show how “entrepreneurship can help the very poor create businesses and experience the dignity of long-lasting jobs.” For the first several years, Village Enterprise remained a small, volunteer-run organization that was operated from their home. After working as a Village Enterprise intern in East Africa, Jessica Jackley co-founded Kiva, the world's first peer-to-peer online microlending platform, in 2005. In 2008, Village Enterprise trained The BOMA Project on its microenterprise model. Village Enterprise hired its first outside CEO, Dianne Calvi, in 2010  The Village Enterprise Graduation model was refined in 2011 to include rigorous targeting methodology, a one-year training program, and a savings program in addition to a cash grant and mentoring. In 2017, Village Enterprise launched the first Development Impact Bond (DIB) for poverty alleviation in Sub-Saharan Africa. Innovations for Poverty Action completed a multi-year, independent Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT) of the Village Enterprise program in 2018.