To win: “1,000 families in Africa can create their own income by noon December 31, 2010″
Through organizations such as Village Enterprise Fund and Kiva.
Volunteer Reflection- Aaron Ross, Senior Director of Corporate Development- Trip to East Africa July 2006- I discovered Village Enterprise Fund (VEF) through a magazine article in 2005, and was immediately enthralled with its vision (“To break the cycle of poverty in East Africa with training and seed capital for income-generating small businesses”) and track record of execution. VEF gives microgrants of $100 to groups of at least 5 people who want to start a small business together. VEF was founded almost 20 years ago by Brian Lehnen, and since then it has funded more than 10,000 small businesses in the poorest areas of Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania.
I made a contribution to VEF and through that ended up speaking with one of their development directors about their interest in using salesforce.com to manage their member and business data. Coincidentally, I was at the time trying to decide on where I wanted to go on my next trip abroad. It turned out that every year or two, VEF organizes a two week “Vision Trip” to East Africa and invites anyone along interested in seeing their operations and meeting their staff (with a couple days of safari at the end). Perfect!
People, including myself, give money usually without truly appreciating where the money goes or what kind of the impact (or lack thereof) it has on the intended beneficiaries. To me, VEF’s Vision Trip was a perfect opportunity to really see and experience how contributions from the United States could travel around the world and changed people’s lives, $100 at a time.
The trip was the kind of life experience you never forget. We traveled to villages in rural areas to visit VEF-funded businesses, meeting both the business owners (beneficiaries) and the local VEF staff who supported them. That was intellectually very interesting. Indescribable though, was the experiences of having entire villages turn out, singing and dancing, to greet our VEF group in celebration of the impact on their lives and community that VEF has made! Their appreciation and gratitude was unbelievable, and derived just as much from their increased empowerment as from the income they received. The businesses gave people back at least some self-sufficiency, reducing their and the community’s dependencies on handouts and aid.
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1 response so far ↓
AffeneIncarma // December 12, 2009 at 12:21 am |
Authentic words, some unadulterated words man. Thanks for making my day!