Unverified non-profit organisation

Village Enterprise Fund (VEF) combines business training, seed capital grants, and ongoing mentoring to qualified rural entrepreneurs in East Africa to create sustainable income-generating businesses.

Village Enterprise plays a unique role in the poverty reduction and microenterprise development fields, focusing on the rural poor and providing those who do not have an income with all of the tools they need to start an income-generating business. Our program builds successful, long-lasting, small businesses with a complete package of support.

Some further points about what VEF does:

• Recruits local leaders and trains them to deliver business training and ongoing mentoring for one year to business owners. Crucial skills in business planning, profit analysis, operations, marketing and record keeping are developed. Starting in 2011, they have also added key financial education topics to our training, including savings, loans, and banking basics for the rural poor.

*Provides seed capital (start-up cash grants or non-cash asset transfers) to qualified participants, who have completed Business Training and written a viable business plan.

• Empower businesses to set up Business Saving Groups to reduce the risk of households falling back into poverty. Village Enterprise also has other aspects of their sustainability strategy, which include providing essential peer/moral support and financial services to businesses as they grow.

Please see the following link for more information on their unique approach.
http://villageenterprise.org/our-work/our-approach/

Website

http://www.villageef.org

Year established

1987

Participant in relevant networks

VEF has a list of Program Partners, Geographic Expansion Partners and Technology Partners. Please see the following link. http://villageenterprise.org/about-us/partners/