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Ep 49. Dianne Calvi, President & CEO Village Enterprise: Full bellies and big dreams!
145 Plays9 months ago
With an audacious goal to lift 20m people in Africa out of extreme poverty by 2030, Dianne Calvi, President and CEO of Village Enterprise, joins us to share how they plan to make this happen.
Centred around their core value of ‘Ubuntu’, a South African term, which means ‘humanity’ or ‘I am because we are’, Village Enterprise seeks to transform lives through entrepreneurship, innovation and collective action.
By partnering with other nonprofits, governments, agencies, and private sector companies, Village Enterprise equips first-time entrepreneurs in Africa with the resources and skills to start climate-smart businesses and savings groups.
We talk about their Poverty Graduation Model and building up their evidence base, using Randomised Control Trials, which has helped catalyse funding for their exciting new programme: working with USAID, the French and the Rwandan governments to end extreme poverty in Rwanda for good. Dianne also shares her personal family story, revealing what really drives her to do this work, which, as one of their entrepreneurs says, is all about enabling full bellies and big dreams. Recorded March 2024.
Note: The title of this episode is a direct quote from an entrepreneur that Village Enterprise supports in Africa, describing the impact of their work.
Guest Biography
Dianne Calvi has been working to end extreme poverty in rural Africa as Village Enterprise’s President and CEO since 2010. Since joining Village Enterprise, Dianne has increased the breadth and depth of the organization’s impact by focusing on strategic partnerships, innovation and technology, rigorous monitoring and evaluation, and building a highly qualified African team.
To date, Village Enterprise has trained over 274k people, started over 80k businesses, and lifted over 1.65 million people out of extreme poverty. With Dianne at the helm, Village Enterprise has completed an independent randomized control trial (RCT) and launched the first Development Impact Bond in poverty alleviation.
Prior to joining Village Enterprise, Dianne served as the President of Bring Me A Book Foundation, a literacy nonprofit that she scaled through partnerships in both domestic and international locations. Previously, she worked in the private sector for Microsoft, Xerox, and Montedison in Milan, Italy.
She has served on several nonprofit boards and was recently appointed to the InterAction board of directors. Dianne received a BA from Stanford University and an MBA from Bocconi University (Milan, IT) on a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholarship.
Links
https://villageenterprise.org
Centred around their core value of ‘Ubuntu’, a South African term, which means ‘humanity’ or ‘I am because we are’, Village Enterprise seeks to transform lives through entrepreneurship, innovation and collective action.
By partnering with other nonprofits, governments, agencies, and private sector companies, Village Enterprise equips first-time entrepreneurs in Africa with the resources and skills to start climate-smart businesses and savings groups.
We talk about their Poverty Graduation Model and building up their evidence base, using Randomised Control Trials, which has helped catalyse funding for their exciting new programme: working with USAID, the French and the Rwandan governments to end extreme poverty in Rwanda for good. Dianne also shares her personal family story, revealing what really drives her to do this work, which, as one of their entrepreneurs says, is all about enabling full bellies and big dreams. Recorded March 2024.
Note: The title of this episode is a direct quote from an entrepreneur that Village Enterprise supports in Africa, describing the impact of their work.
Guest Biography
Dianne Calvi has been working to end extreme poverty in rural Africa as Village Enterprise’s President and CEO since 2010. Since joining Village Enterprise, Dianne has increased the breadth and depth of the organization’s impact by focusing on strategic partnerships, innovation and technology, rigorous monitoring and evaluation, and building a highly qualified African team.
To date, Village Enterprise has trained over 274k people, started over 80k businesses, and lifted over 1.65 million people out of extreme poverty. With Dianne at the helm, Village Enterprise has completed an independent randomized control trial (RCT) and launched the first Development Impact Bond in poverty alleviation.
Prior to joining Village Enterprise, Dianne served as the President of Bring Me A Book Foundation, a literacy nonprofit that she scaled through partnerships in both domestic and international locations. Previously, she worked in the private sector for Microsoft, Xerox, and Montedison in Milan, Italy.
She has served on several nonprofit boards and was recently appointed to the InterAction board of directors. Dianne received a BA from Stanford University and an MBA from Bocconi University (Milan, IT) on a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholarship.
Links
https://villageenterprise.org
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Transcript
Scaling Impact: From Thousands to Millions
00:00:00
Speaker
If you really want to take this program from the hundreds of thousands to the millions of entrepreneurs, which is our goal, our audacious goal is to lift 20 million people out of extreme poverty by 2030, we really believe that the only way to get to that kind of scale is through these government partnerships.
00:00:27
Speaker
Welcome to an exciting new season of the Charity CEO podcast, where we bring you the stories and insights of remarkable charity leaders who are changing the world for the better. We talk to the people who run nonprofits, the movers and shakers who are driving positive change in this space, inspiring you to take bold action and make a difference. To all our listeners across the globe, I am thrilled to have you with us.
00:00:50
Speaker
We've received amazing feedback from listeners in over 42 countries, including the UK, US, Australia, Canada and India. Your support and engagement is what makes this community so special. To all of you who pour your hearts and souls into making the world a better place through your work in the charity and non-profit sectors, thank you. I'm Divya O'Connor and here's the show.
Meet Diane Calvi: Entrepreneurial Journey
00:01:15
Speaker
With an audacious goal to lift 20 million people in Africa out of extreme poverty by 2030, Diane Calvi, CEO and President of Village Enterprise, joins us to share how they plan to make this happen. Centred around their core value of Ubuntu, a South African term which means humanity, or I am because we are, Village Enterprise seeks to transform lives through entrepreneurship, innovation and collective action.
00:01:40
Speaker
By partnering with other nonprofits, governments, agencies, and private sector companies, Village Enterprise equips first-time entrepreneurs in Africa with the resources and skills to start climate-smart businesses and savings groups. We talk about their poverty graduation model and building up their evidence-based using randomized control trials, which has helped catalyse funding for their exciting new program, working with USAID, the French, and the Rwandan governments to end extreme poverty in Rwanda for good.
00:02:08
Speaker
Diane also shares her personal family story, revealing what really drives her to do this work, which, as one of their entrepreneurs says, is all about enabling full bellies and big dreams. Hi, Diane. Welcome to the Charity CEO podcast. Thank you for joining us all the way from the West Coast in San Francisco.
00:02:29
Speaker
Hi, Divya, it's a pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me. Diane, I always start the show with some icebreaker questions and there are five questions. So if you're ready, we can get going. Yeah, sounds good. Thank you. So question one, what was your first job? My first job was as an entrepreneur. As an eight year old, I started my first business. I was a very ambitious little eight year old and I started a business selling golf balls to the golfers in my neighborhood.
00:02:57
Speaker
We lived near a golf course, and I would go and gather up golf balls from around the neighborhood that had been hit by golfers outside of the range. And I would go home, I would clean them up and polish them, and I would price them. I found out what balls were more prestigious, and I would price them a little higher than the other balls. And then I would also put all the balls that had nicks on them
00:03:23
Speaker
in a big bag for like balls for the driving range and I would go door to door to the different golfers in the neighborhood and sell them golf balls and I think my superpower at the time was that I was just this really ambitious little eight-year-old and the golfers in the neighborhood could not resist buying my golf balls and so I had a very successful business and obviously didn't know it at the time like I went on to start other businesses and being an entrepreneur
00:03:51
Speaker
as a young child set me up well for this work I'm doing now at Village Enterprise where we help people become first time entrepreneurs. Well, Diane, that really connects into the next question I have for you. And I wonder what your superpower is now as a professional rather than as an eight year old. Yeah. So my team recently said that my superpower is that I'm an unstoppable believer. And that really resonated with me as I feel like my superpower is the
00:04:21
Speaker
intersection of perseverance and optimism. That's brilliant. And I wondered, Anne, as a child, what did you dream of being when you grew up? Was it to be an entrepreneur?
00:04:31
Speaker
No, actually what I wanted to be when I was really young is I wanted to be a park ranger at the National Park Yosemite because I loved being out in nature. And my family would visit Yosemite once every other year. And I thought that park rangers just had the best job because they were paid to do what they enjoy doing most.
00:04:53
Speaker
I still love being out in nature and I spent a week and use somebody for my birthday this past year, hiking those very same trails that I love to hike when I was a kid. That's lovely. Our listeners can't see this, but Diane, I pulled out my San Francisco mug for my tea in honor of having you on the show this morning. My next question is, what do you like most about living in San Francisco?
00:05:16
Speaker
What I love most is the fact that we are surrounded by nature. And San Francisco is a really unique city in that it's surrounded by water and I love to be on the water. I'm a sailor and so we can go sailing here. I love to hike and we have hills that surround the city and so there are so many places to go hiking.
00:05:38
Speaker
I love to run and I can run on all the paths. And I think it's really a unique city from that standpoint. It's a city, but it's immersed in nature. Beautiful. And the final icebreaker question, if you had the opportunity to interview anyone in the world dead or alive, who would it be?
Inspirations: Influences and Icons
00:05:57
Speaker
And what one question would you like to ask them?
00:05:59
Speaker
Well, my hero is Nelson Mandela, and I've read his autobiography and was just impressed and also in awe of his ability to forgive after spending so many years in prison. And so I think my question would be, throughout your life, you face really immense challenges. You demonstrated remarkable resilience and this ability to achieve reconciliation with people that were your enemies.
00:06:29
Speaker
and who had persecuted you. So what advice would you give to individuals and communities around the world on how to foster unity and understanding, given the increasing conflict and sort of diverging viewpoints that people are experiencing in the world today? I think he could really help us. I wish he were still alive today. I think we need people like Nelson Mandela in the world.
00:06:53
Speaker
Absolutely, especially given everything that's happening in the world right now. But Diane, moving on to what we are here to talk about.
Village Enterprise: Origin and Growth
00:07:02
Speaker
You are the CEO and the president of the nonprofit Village Enterprise. So let's start by talking about the origin story of your organization and its vision and mission. Village Enterprise was founded by Joan Hessenis and Brian Lennon back in 1987.
00:07:20
Speaker
And they went on a trip to Africa and they witnessed the abject poverty in Africa and they wanted to do something about it. And their idea was shaped in some form by the fact that they were coming from the Silicon Valley.
00:07:36
Speaker
were based in the San Francisco area. And as most people know, the Silicon Valley is a habit of innovation and entrepreneurship. And they felt that entrepreneurship would be a good way out of poverty. And they felt that what people really needed was some cash, just some money to start their businesses and a mentor that would follow them along and coach them and encourage them.
00:08:04
Speaker
And so that was the beginning and it was run primarily as a volunteer organization for about the first 18 to 20 years of its existence. And in the early 2000s, they started to professionalize the organization. And when I came on board in 2010, it was still a very small organization. It had a $1 million budget.
00:08:27
Speaker
and 13 staff members that half were in the US and half were in Africa. So we worked primarily through volunteers on the ground. But when I came on board, the board was really interested in having greater impact. And the organization at the time, being a volunteer run organization,
00:08:49
Speaker
really didn't have the structure to expand and scale. And we also were looking at ways that we could have outsized impact because we had this huge vision of an African continent free of extreme poverty. But by being a small implementer with a million dollar budget, we were just really a drop in the bucket. We really weren't going to make much of a difference in this big problem. And so when I came on board, we put a strategic plan in place.
00:09:19
Speaker
And we put in that plan ways that the organization could both improve the program to have greater impact, but also the plan to do a large-scale randomized control trial so that we could build evidence for the model and potentially
00:09:39
Speaker
then have others replicate the model so that village enterprise didn't have to be just the implementer. And randomized control trials are increasingly being used in international development to prove that a model actually works. And it is the gold standard because it's the only way you can prove attribution. And so we put that plan in place. We had no idea how we were going to fund that randomized control trial or also the expansion of our organization.
00:10:08
Speaker
But over the first few years of my coming on board, we were very fortunate to get the attention of some funders that were interested in this. And we put in place that first randomized control trial in 2013 and were successful. Very, very positive results. And so as a result, Village Enterprise has been on this very exciting journey over the last 10 or 11 years of expanding our work.
00:10:37
Speaker
At the Cherie Blair Foundation for Women, we also support women entrepreneurs across Africa and low and middle income countries. And we also talk about entrepreneurship being a powerful route to financial independence. I'm really interested, Diane, to hear more about how your poverty graduation model really works. And of course, the randomized control trials. How they worked, what did you learn from it, and what evidence and impact did they show?
00:11:04
Speaker
I'll start with our model and actually back up and start with our mission. So Village Enterprise is really working to completely transform the lives of people living in extreme poverty through this entrepreneurship approach. And our mission is to end extreme poverty in rural Africa through entrepreneurship, innovation, and collective action.
00:11:26
Speaker
Because we know that we can't do this work alone. We have to work in collaboration with other nonprofits, with the private sector, with governments and stakeholders.
Innovative Models: Training and Technology
00:11:35
Speaker
And because the population we work with is the most vulnerable, people living in rural Africa with very few resources, most of them are women, over 85% are women. We work with refugees and youth living in these very remote rural areas. And there are many obstacles that keep them
00:11:53
Speaker
in poverty. And so our model is a multifaceted approach that tries to address most of the obstacles that they face. And so we start by organizing them into savings groups of 30 individuals. And so they're organized into a group and then they self organize into business groups. And this is all done
00:12:19
Speaker
based on their own desires to work together rather than, so there's a lot of, we try to develop agency and give people choices and then we provide them with training. We provide them with business and financial literacy training, life skills training. We work with families, so we provide family support as well. We know that there are gender dynamics in play and we want to make sure that
00:12:43
Speaker
Our entrepreneurs are successful, so we want to make sure they have their families' support. And so that training is really important, and that training is delivered by a local business mentor. And so all of our programming is delivered by people that are part of their communities and speak the local languages, understand the challenges that our entrepreneurs face. And those mentors also provide ongoing mentoring as well as training.
00:13:12
Speaker
And after they receive their training and some mentoring, they put together a business plan with their group of three individuals. So they put together a business plan and they identify what business they're going to start and what inputs they're going to need for that business and what those inputs are going to cost. And then they also identify kind of like a little P&L, like a profit loss to make sure that whatever business they start is actually going to generate profit. And they do that with their business mentor.
00:13:41
Speaker
And then they receive their C capital in the form of a cash transfer rather than alone. Because the evidence that's been generated over the last several years shows that people living in extreme poverty really need that cash upfront as a grant rather than alone in order to be able to invest in the business and continue to expand their business so they can lift their families out of poverty. And that's our goal, is to end extreme poverty,
00:14:09
Speaker
and get people to a place where their businesses are profitable, they're generating income and savings, so that they can lift themselves and their families out of poverty for good. Another component of our program, in addition to the seed capital, the training and the mentoring and that savings group, is that we're increasingly adding digital technology to the program. Our entrepreneurs are some of the last entrepreneurs not using digital technology to run their businesses.
00:14:38
Speaker
And so Village Enterprise is in a unique position to be able to help them become familiar with digital technology. So we help them set up mobile money accounts so that they can receive their seed capital, their cash grant on a mobile phone. We have helped with doing some mobile mentoring. We do some of our training using digital technology now.
00:15:05
Speaker
And we just recently launched an application called DreamSave, which is for the savings group and it's a digital bookkeeping application. And it really is revolutionized the savings group because no longer are they having to keep all of their books in a written form. They actually have a digital application that also connects them to financial institutions and new services that are available through
00:15:33
Speaker
the private sector. And so it's really exciting. When you meet our entrepreneurs at the beginning of the program, they're very shy. They're not very confident. They're usually not able to feed their families. Usually families are just eating one meal a day. Their kids are oftentimes not in school, but by the end of the program, our entrepreneurs are confident. They have hope for the future. They're able to feed their families two to three meals a day.
00:16:00
Speaker
and children are attending school, and especially the girl children are attending school, which is really exciting to see. And since you are in a similar type of nonprofit, I mean, I'm sure you've seen that impact firsthand yourself and how exciting it is to see the transformation that can occur in a relatively short period of time.
00:16:20
Speaker
Absolutely. I love, Diane, that your programming is addressing some of the structural barriers in terms of looking to increase digital literacy and digital inclusion. I'm curious, in that context, how do you overcome challenges around literacy and overcoming the digital divide? Do you provide them devices and mobile phones? How do you address that? One of the things that's exciting to see is also how
00:16:48
Speaker
digital technology is being used by people that have very low levels of literacy. And part of that is that there are ways to do that with symbols, with making it very simple, like not a lot of words. There's voice technology that makes it easier so that people can
00:17:06
Speaker
actually use voice rather than actually reading. So there are a lot of ways that digital technologies are overcoming that hurdle, but it is a significant hurdle. And it's the reason why we're testing this application at the savings group level, because in a savings group of 30 individuals, we'll usually have one or two people that are literate and that are more comfortable using a smartphone.
00:17:35
Speaker
And so we start by introducing it at the savings group level.
00:17:40
Speaker
and then everybody gets familiar with it. They pass the smartphone around, people can help one another out, but there's the treasure that is the treasure of the savings group that is the one doing most of the inputting of the data and sending the messages to the rest of the participants of the savings group via the digital application. So it doesn't require that every single individual in the savings group be fully literate and have
00:18:08
Speaker
full numeracy skills. And the same goes at the business group level. I mean, we start businesses in groups of three, and as a result, different people bring different skills to the business. And in the case of a group of three, you might have one individual that has basic literacy skills, maybe the others don't, but that allows that one person to be able to really use the phone and manage the business with the phone.
00:18:34
Speaker
And in group businesses are, I think, positive for other reasons as well. When you work with women, women have family responsibilities. And by starting a business with a group rather than as an individual, they can share the responsibilities also of running the business. And we see that a lot when they're a retail business, they'll take on different hours, different days. And so this business is more sustainable over time.
Partnerships for Progress: Collaboration in Action
00:19:00
Speaker
A few weeks ago, I attended the UN's 68th convening of the Commission on the Status of Women, and two really strong themes that emerged from all of the discussions were, number one, the power of partnerships and the need to collaborate across all sectors in order to make real progress against the Sustainable Development Goals, and Diane, you mentioned
00:19:19
Speaker
partnerships there earlier. And the second is the importance of engaging with the nexus of gender, climate, and finance. And so with that in mind, tell us, how do you intend to scale your evidence-based approach, particularly working with other nonprofit organizations? And talk to us a little bit about your focus on this nexus of gender, climate, and finance.
00:19:43
Speaker
Yeah, so I'll start with the first. So Village Enterprises scaling strategy is to work with both larger nonprofits and governments to scale the model. And we have already in place some really exciting partnerships. We recognize that Village Enterprise can't do it all. So we are working in partnership with essentially three different types of partners when it comes to larger nonprofits.
00:20:12
Speaker
We have a long-term partnership with Mercy Corps to work with refugees, and it's called Dreams. We're currently working in Kenya, Uganda, and Ethiopia, and expanding to Tanzania. And we will be working with over 60,000 refugee
00:20:34
Speaker
households over the next three years with this project. And what we do is we're pairing Village Enterprise's poverty graduation approach with Mercy Corps's market systems development approach. And the reason why that's important is Village Enterprise starts a lot of small businesses
00:20:52
Speaker
that in the refugee setting, oftentimes there are private sector companies to buy those products. And so what Mercy Corps does is incentivizes and works with the private sector to bring those private sector actors to contexts like the refugee settlement context and works with them to set them up to connect with our entrepreneurs.
00:21:14
Speaker
And that creates a value chain within the refugee settlement area. And it really is exciting to see what a difference that can make because as you know, refugees are oftentimes staying in the refugee camps for many, many years. And also stories are always really helpful. I myself was in the refugee camp, the Biddy Biddy refugee camp back in 2018 and met one of our entrepreneurs, Salome,
00:21:44
Speaker
right as she was getting started and explained to me how she had to flee her country in the middle of the night, leaving her husband behind, fled with her six children, had to walk for two months, carrying one of her children. And, you know, as a mother, I just can't even imagine what that would be like to not know what you're going to find when you get to the refugee camp that you're trying to get to and
00:22:11
Speaker
the struggle to get there. And when she arrived at the refugee camp, they gave her a bottle of oil, a jerry can for water, and a bag of rice, and they set her up in a tent. And that was going to be her life until, like, Village Enterprise came into this settlement area and started providing our program. And when I met her, she was just at the beginning of the training, and she was really excited. She was going to be starting this
00:22:39
Speaker
retail business selling meat. And she said in the refugee camp, there was no meat and people in South Sudan where she came from are used to having meat in their diet. And she was so excited. And she said, you know, no matter what, I've learned so much in this training and I hope to go back to Sudan one day and no one will be able to take away what I've learned. And I know that I'll always be able to provide for my children.
00:23:07
Speaker
Well, fast forward, I asked some of my staff to follow up with Salome and see if she was still in a refugee camp a few months ago. And now Salome owns two acres of land. All of her children are in school. She's actually taking care of five children that have lost their parents and sending them to school as well. She's running two businesses, a retail business and an agriculture business on the two acres of land that she purchased.
00:23:36
Speaker
And she's a leader in the community and that's just in a little over five years time. And so these partnerships where you're really providing all of the necessary resources and really addressing some of the issues at the systemic level. So providing the resources to these first time entrepreneurs that they need to be successful and then encouraging private sector actors and working with them
00:24:03
Speaker
It really has been an amazing program and transformative in a context that is very, very challenging. So that's one of our partnerships. We also work in partnership with Catholic Relief Services to reduce child malnutrition. And this is a partnership that we've had for several years as well. And that has also been very exciting. We've seen
00:24:25
Speaker
child malnutrition rates be reduced significantly. At the beginning of the program, 60% of the children are malnourished. And by the end of the program, just 5% of the children are malnourished. So if you turn it around, 95% of the children at the end of the program are well-nourished, which is really, really amazing. This is a program that we're implementing in areas
00:24:49
Speaker
like Northern Kenya, which have suffered from drought. And so that's another program where Village Enterprise combines its poverty graduation model with Catholic Relief Services nutrition programming and education. And that's been tremendously successful and we're replicating that in other geographies as well. And that the third is around climate. And you mentioned this intersection of climate and gender
00:25:15
Speaker
And we've been working for many years with conservation partners like Wildlife Conservation Society and Africa Wildlife Foundation around protected areas. In these protected areas, one of the things that people have to do is they have to rely on the environment for their livelihoods if they have no other livelihoods. So Village Enterprise works with conservation partners to provide our livelihood program to give them an alternative
00:25:44
Speaker
to cutting down trees and poaching animals. If they don't have an alternative, that's their source of income. But by providing this kind of programming with training and mentoring, we can reduce deforestation and reduce the destruction of the ecosystem, essentially, around these protected areas. So that's another type of partnership with larger NGOs that have other areas of expertise. So a village enterprise can
00:26:14
Speaker
continue to do what it does well but work with other partners. The other important type of partner for us, and increasingly it's our partner that we feel will take this model to scale, is working with governments. And we work with governments both at the local and the national level. So we're working in Kenya,
00:26:34
Speaker
and Rwanda and Kenya were working on a World Bank funded project. And in Rwanda, we just received one of USA Development Innovation Ventures largest grants to work with the Rwandan government. And in both of those cases, we work both with local government officials and local government policies in place, and then also at the national level. And then another part of what we do is we are
00:27:03
Speaker
training the government to implement the model. So in addition to Village Enterprise doing its own implementation, we're also passing on our know-how and our technology and our skills to government so that government can actually incorporate it as part of their social protection. And eventually it will be government that will deliver it at scale. And so that's something that we feel
00:27:30
Speaker
If you really want to take this program from the hundreds of thousands to the millions of entrepreneurs, which is our goal, our audacious goal is to lift 20 million people out of extreme poverty by 2030, we really believe that the only way to get to that kind of scale is through these government partnerships. So Diane, what about the longer term impact of your programs? Have you looked at that at all?
Proven Impact: Studies and Results
00:27:56
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, we have. In 2022, we completed a five-year longitudinal study, and the results were really positive. Families' incomes had almost doubled, and their savings had increased by over 900%. But just as importantly, everyone in the family is benefiting long after we exit. Just some facts that we learned, children are no longer malnourished.
00:28:20
Speaker
They're able to attend school and their overall well-being has improved. And some other interesting findings is that women participating in the Village Enterprise Program report that their standing in the community has improved as well as their mental health and their overall sense of happiness. And that's so important that people feel hopeful for the future and happy. The success of our entrepreneurs like Salome ensures that entire families are lifted out of extreme poverty
00:28:50
Speaker
and the next generation has a brighter future. I was watching one of the videos on your website in researching for our conversation. And one of the entrepreneurs talks about how your program enables full bellies and big dreams. And so it's great to hear that the longitudinal study results really bear that out.
00:29:10
Speaker
Yeah, and then that video also you saw how the entrepreneur was able to send her daughter to university. And that daughter is now her daughter is also going to follow in her mother's footsteps. And that is just what we hope to see with this program.
00:29:30
Speaker
Absolutely brilliant, really having that generational impact. It's stories like Solomaze that you shared there, Diane, that are just so inspiring. And I know that those are the stories that really drives us to continue doing this work and the work that we do. But you talked there about working with governments in order to take the model to scale. What do you see as some of the challenges to achieving scale?
00:29:55
Speaker
Governments are complex and you have lots of different ministries, you have lots of different decision makers and influencers. And I think one of the challenges is you want to get buy-in at different levels, so both as an engine at the local level and the national level and then within different ministries because the kind of work that we do is really cross-cutting. It's economic development, but it's also gender, but it's also climate.
00:30:25
Speaker
The beauty of the model it is, it does have impact across so many different areas, but it is important. I think when you're working with government to get buy-in in lots of different places and that takes time. So it's a relationship building process. I'm really excited. We are really making progress in that way. Like just in the last couple of months, we had some real big successes. We just signed MOUs.
00:30:51
Speaker
with two county governments in Kenya and are in the process of training Caritas, which is local NGO on the ground in Kenya as part of our national government project with the World Bank. And so we are really seeing that progress both at the local level policies being put in place by these county governments and then at the national level.
00:31:17
Speaker
really training others to implement the model. Similarly in Rwanda, I was just in Rwanda a couple of weeks ago and it was exciting to get, we've had meetings with the ministers of local government. We've had meetings with, there's an organization called LODA that actually is the implementing arm of the government. And we've got real buy-in there.
00:31:42
Speaker
and then the Rwandan Development Board, which is the agency that works with the private sector. I met with the CEO there, and there's real excitement. And I think with our project with USAID, the goal is to end extreme poverty in Rwanda. So it is a really big goal, but I feel like it's possible because the Rwandan government has a strategy. They've put in place a national strategy to end extreme poverty, to eradicate extreme poverty,
00:32:12
Speaker
And they're really committed to working with us and other partners to achieve that goal. And I think this collaboration between nonprofits that have experience and evidence that the work that they do actually leads to impact. You had asked earlier about the randomized control trial. One of the things that the Rwandan government was really excited about when I first went to talk to them three years ago was the fact that we had implemented
00:32:41
Speaker
the first development impact bond in poverty alleviation. And this was a very risky project because in a development impact bond, you only get paid if you achieve results. So most projects in the international development world are paid on activities like how many entrepreneurs you train and how many people go through your program in an impact bond.
00:33:06
Speaker
we were getting paid on how much income and savings our entrepreneurs actually generated after a year. And that income and savings was evaluated with a large-scale randomized control trial. So over 14,000 households in Kenya and Uganda. And during that development impact bomb, the COVID pandemic hit.
00:33:29
Speaker
And we all know what happened in the pandemic, right? Businesses shut down. People in Africa, it was even more strict than in many places in Europe and the United States where you couldn't even move. Like transportation was completely shut down for a very long time. But our entrepreneurs were really agile and responded. And what we found is even though the randomized control trial data collection happened after the pandemic,
00:33:59
Speaker
the results were still very positive. We still actually exceeded the targets in terms of income and savings. And the evaluation firm found that for every dollar invested in the program, $5 in income were generated by the program. And so, you know, the Rwandan government is looking at this data and they're saying like, okay, we invest a dollar in this program and we're going to get $5 of income
00:34:29
Speaker
Out of that, that's a really good return on investment. Governments are thinking of how to use their dollars for social protection because typically most social protection programs don't generate a return, right? You're helping people out, but it's a cost for the government. There's no return on investment. And so I think the Rwandan government is really excited about the fact that not only are we helping people out of extreme poverty, we're educating people, we're providing them with digital resources that
00:34:58
Speaker
allow them to just be more productive in the society. And I was just there meeting with our entrepreneurs. I saw DreamSave in action and seeing how excited those entrepreneurs were to actually be using digital technology. They see others using it, but to actually be using it themselves in such a powerful way, being able to keep their books, get connected to financial institutions. It's very empowering for them.
00:35:28
Speaker
And it was fun for me to see, to see it firsthand. The Rwanda project sounds so exciting and I wish you all the very best with it because I know that if you are successful in actually ending extreme poverty in Rwanda, Rwanda then becomes a role model for other countries to be able to end extreme poverty as well. And I also love your audacious goal of lifting 20 million people out of extreme
00:35:56
Speaker
poverty. And another theme that emerged from CSW is the growing importance of trust-based philanthropy to enable organizations to scale tried and tested solutions like yours, Dan. So can you share with us your experience of trust-based philanthropy to date?
00:36:16
Speaker
We've been very fortunate, I think, because we invested early on in that first randomized control trial that we did back in 2013. We were very transparent. When we put that RCT out on the internet, we had no idea if we were going to generate positive or negative results. When you do a large scale randomized control trial, it gets published.
00:36:42
Speaker
by the primary investigators. So everyone knows that you're doing one, but you don't know yet if the results are going to be positive. And so we really were taking a huge risk by doing that. But one, we believed in our model. Two, we had already put in place digital monitoring evaluation systems in our organization. We were kind of an early adopter back in 2011 of digital technology to do monitoring evaluation.
00:37:11
Speaker
So we already had generated kind of our own internal data. So we felt fairly confident that we would see positive results. We weren't 100% sure. And obviously when you do an RCT, you're comparing to a control group, not just comparing baseline to inline over time. So it's riskier because sometimes you can get positive internal results just because good things happen in the community, not because necessarily your program had that impact.
00:37:40
Speaker
So it's not until you do an RCT that you know that it was indeed the impact of the program. So by doing this randomized control trial and being very transparent and getting those positive results, I think those trust-based philanthropists and foundations that are looking for those kind of relationships, they're also looking for organizations that are very transparent with the data that they collect and then
00:38:08
Speaker
looking for organizations that are willing to also test their models and be open about what those results are and trying to contribute to the learning. Because we're always learning. We're always adapting. We're always trying to get it better, right? We always want it better than it is today. And that's what most trust-based philanthropists are looking for. They're looking for organizations that deliver impact
00:38:33
Speaker
that are transparent and that are constantly learning and trying to improve and increase that impact. And so we have many foundations that give us unrestricted funding as well as many donors that give us unrestricted funding. And that really is helpful for organizations because that way you can invest in innovation. You can invest in building the capacity of your staff and just become
00:39:04
Speaker
better organization as a result. And if all of your money is restricted, it really limits you to doing only what those funders want you to do. And it doesn't give you a lot of room for innovation. Talking of innovation, Diane, what are some of the latest innovations that Village Enterprise is currently working on?
Future Focus: Digital and AI Revolution
00:39:24
Speaker
We've already highlighted some of them. I think the whole area around digital technology is the real focus of our organization and has been an area where we
00:39:33
Speaker
have been an innovator. We really believe that digital technology can revolutionize micro business development. Most micro businesses in Africa are not using digital technology today. The people that are running the smallest businesses oftentimes aren't using like digital bookkeeping applications. They're not necessarily connected to markets with digital technology. So we feel that's a huge area and it's becoming
00:40:02
Speaker
Even more interesting with artificial intelligence and how artificial intelligence could be used, we're also looking at digital technology as a way to potentially do our targeting using satellite technology. There are lots of different ways we feel digital technology can contribute to increasing impact and also increasing the scalability of the model, bringing the costs down in terms of each
00:40:30
Speaker
household we positively impact. And then I think another area of innovation is around results-based funding. Village Enterprise, as I mentioned, was the first to launch a development impact bond
00:40:44
Speaker
and poverty alleviation. And we feel strongly that if we want to solve this problem of really ending extreme poverty, that the dollars that are invested to help people out of extreme poverty need to be directed to the programs that have the greatest impact.
00:41:06
Speaker
and the greatest impact as measured by getting people out of extreme poverty, not just by the number of people that are served or beneficiaries is oftentimes used in the international development sector. It really is about looking at are they out of extreme poverty by the end of the program and then paying for that impact, paying for that result.
00:41:29
Speaker
And we're working with, there's a results-based ecosystem to try to move the sector in that direction. And working on creating, for example, for the Rwanda project, an outcome fund of $28 million. And in that outcome fund, that would be funding that both the government could tap into,
00:41:56
Speaker
But it also could be funding that local NGOs that would deliver the model could tap into because the Rwandan government both will be implementing through their own government staff, but they'll also have relationships with local nonprofits. And if we create an outcome fund that anyone could tap into, as long as they achieve that result of getting people out of extreme poverty. And that's one of the ways we feel
00:42:24
Speaker
We can drive greater impact as if we help the sector move in that direction. So that's another area of innovation. And then the third is some of this partnership work that we're doing. The DREAMS project is a relatively new project just launched in the last couple of years. And we have randomized control trials going on, both in Uganda and Ethiopia.
00:42:49
Speaker
because we want to actually demonstrate that this approach of combining poverty graduation with market systems development work actually has greater impact than either program has on its own. So this like tight integration of programming is another area of innovation and it requires building long-term partnerships. It's like oftentimes partnerships are like short-term partnerships that are funding driven. And in the case of,
00:43:16
Speaker
types of partnerships we're really trying to build partnerships that are going to drive greater impact and get more people out of extreme poverty. So I think that's another area of innovation. It's interesting. You spoke there about the potential impact of AI and how we could really leverage
00:43:37
Speaker
its potential. We've just done a piece of research supported by Intuit where we surveyed over 1100 women entrepreneurs across 80 countries and we were asking about their use of digital tools and understanding of AI
00:43:53
Speaker
and 44 percent of the women surveyed said that they already use tools like chat GPT and other AI enabled tools in their businesses, and 66 percent said that they actually wanted more training on AI because they felt that a lack of knowledge was a barrier holding them back. So that I think very much speaks as well to what you've just shared. Yeah, I feel like it's a huge, huge opportunity. I think about my
00:44:21
Speaker
own experiences like how I've been using it personally and just how powerful it is in terms of learning and the access to knowledge as opposed to just information. And with our entrepreneurs, they're not using digital technology typically when they start our program. As I mentioned, people living in extreme poverty, they've never run a business before. They're not entrepreneurs when they start our program. This is their first
00:44:51
Speaker
experience becoming an entrepreneur, but they're eager for knowledge. They're no different from the two of us in their appetite for knowledge and for skills. They want to learn. And AI all of a sudden opens up a whole new world. I really think level the playing field in a way that very few technologies have been able to do it.
00:45:15
Speaker
And part also because of language translation, AI provides language translation and that's getting better and voiced, you know, so that potentially people could hear responses rather than have to read them. And so it is really exciting. I mean, there are still barriers in terms of bandwidth and reliable internet and all sorts of infrastructure challenges.
00:45:40
Speaker
But even those are changing so quickly. Whenever I go back out to the field, I've been doing this for 14 years, and I worked at Microsoft before I came to the nonprofit sector. So I have a real interest in digital technology and its power.
00:45:59
Speaker
What I've seen just in the last 14 years has just been incredible in terms of internet access, mobile phone ownership across Africa, and then also the fact that Africa has such a young population is another, I think, huge opportunity, right? Because young people are so much more eager to adopt new technologies and try things out. I think there are going to be new businesses that we can't even imagine right now in rural areas.
00:46:28
Speaker
that will become possible because of digital technology. They're not currently possible, but in just a few years will be possible. And Diane, turning now to talk about you a little bit, I am always fascinated by people's personal stories and what really drives them.
Personal Motivations: From Challenges to Empathy
00:46:46
Speaker
Tell us about your leadership journey. What has brought you to where you are today? So my inspiration really comes from my parents. I don't know if you've ever heard this, but Warren Buffett, the investor, the American investor, Warren Buffett,
00:46:58
Speaker
He likes to talk about how he won the ovarian lottery. I haven't heard that actually. I say the same. I won the ovarian lottery. And what does he mean by that? It's like we are just very lucky to have been born
00:47:14
Speaker
Like I was born into the United States, you know, in a country that was peaceful and prosperous to loving and supportive parents. I had the opportunity to go to school. I then had the opportunity to go on to university and get an MBA and all of those incredible opportunities I really didn't take for granted. And in part, that's because I grew up with my mom who involved me in community service really early on.
00:47:41
Speaker
When I was like 11 years old, I was tutoring kids in low-income communities and it's striking when you go from a more like middle-class community to a low-income community and you hear about the struggles that those kids have. Both of the parents working oftentimes much longer hours, oftentimes at night and having a sense that I was so privileged. But I also grew up with a dad who
00:48:06
Speaker
actually grew up in extreme poverty during the Depression. His dad died when he was five years old. And his mom struggled to just put food on the table. And it was the years after the Depression. It was a tough time in the U.S. And during the summer, he and his mom and his two brothers would travel from Ohio where they lived to Michigan and pick cherries all summer. And he talked to me about living in a crowded tent with no indoor sanitation, no running water.
00:48:36
Speaker
and barely enough to eat. And he was just a little kid. And it was really tough. And I was so curious to learn more about my dad's story, but he didn't really want to share that much about his childhood with me. He went on to becoming a very successful person. And that's part because the educational opportunities in the United States, he was able to get a college degree. He went on and got an MBA and a PhD.
00:49:05
Speaker
intelligent guy, very successful. But I knew about this past. And when I was young, I was so curious. I wanted to know more, but he was very, you didn't want to talk about it. Why do you think that was? I think it's shame. I think
00:49:22
Speaker
People are ashamed to be poor. We don't treat people that are poor with a lot of respect. And we blame them for some of the things that are just the result of being poor. And our society continues to do that. It's gotten better. There's more awareness today than there was when my dad was growing up. But it's still tough, and I hear it from our entrepreneurs. They're ashamed. Their kids won't go to school because they can't afford the uniform.
00:49:51
Speaker
And they don't want to be that one child or those few children in the school without the uniform. They don't want to be different. They stand out, right, as being poor, poorer than the other kids. And I think that it's really hard as a kid, don't want to be different. That kind of takes me to another part of my personal story is I was born pigeon-toed. And when I was six years old, my parents put me into braces that I had to wear
00:50:18
Speaker
24 hours a day, if you've ever seen a child that has polio braces, they look similar to that. They were like these metal braces with these corrected shoes that kind of turned outward to keep my feet from turning inward. And so I really stood out as a child and it was hard. Kids would make fun of me. They wouldn't talk to me. They would exclude me from their play groups and didn't want to be my friend. And so that early experience,
00:50:46
Speaker
also made me realize, in addition to like kind of hearing my dad's story, I also had that personal experience of knowing what it feels like to be excluded just based on something that's so superficial, right? Just I was wearing these braces. And I think that happens to most people with disabilities. That's a very real experience, lived experience for most people. I was fortunate that my time in those braces was limited. I was only on the braces for about a year and a half, but it was
00:51:17
Speaker
Right at the beginning of my elementary school education, so it did influence me. So getting on my parents both inspired me to give back to use my abilities and after spending time in the private sector working for companies like Microsoft. I decided that I really wanted to dedicate the second half of my career to service of others.
00:51:36
Speaker
And I started serving on boards. I served on the board of the organization that serves the homeless of the San Francisco area and really enjoyed that board experience. And that led me to the opportunity to run an early literacy organization, which in turn led me to the opportunity to lead Village Enterprise. In 2010, I was approached. I mentioned Village Enterprise was this very small organization.
00:52:03
Speaker
It was struggling a bit. It was the end of the last Great Recession that we had in 2007 to 2009. This was 2010, so we were still kind of in the midst of that difficult financial time. And so I wasn't sure, but I did feel like this entrepreneurship approach
00:52:24
Speaker
was a really sound one. And then my dad's own personal story, I had a conversation with my dad about it. And my dad said, Diane, you should go for it. This is something that you should do. And those early years were difficult. I struggled, but once I started gaining that momentum, when we got the positive results from the first randomized control trial, and we really started
00:52:51
Speaker
to be able to expand the work and have really this significant impact and meeting the entrepreneurs out in the field and seeing the impact that we were having in their lives and how transformative that was energized me and kept me going. But the thing that really, I think, left the most lasting impression on me was my dad passed away a couple of years ago. I'm so sorry to hear that. Thanks.
00:53:20
Speaker
And right before he passed away, he said, Diane, I am so proud of you. And when we would talk about it, he would talk about how he could really understand profoundly the impact that the organization was having on the lives of these people.
00:53:44
Speaker
And, you know, I so respected my dad and so loved my father that those like final words have really stayed with me and mean more than anything else.
00:53:55
Speaker
Dan, I'm so struck by what you've just shared there and from what you've told us about how there is such a stigma still really associated with poverty or disability. And I think what your dad said there as well is really beautiful and sort of I can see how all of that has really driven your career trajectory and the decisions that you've made with your board experience. And yeah, it's beautiful to see such a purpose driven leader.
00:54:25
Speaker
Thank you. Looking back, Diane, is there any advice that you would give to your younger self on day one of becoming a nonprofit CEO or on that first day when you took up the job at Village Enterprise?
Leadership Lessons: Wisdom from Experience
00:54:40
Speaker
I would tell my younger self to listen more and talk less. I think as leaders, we are expected
00:54:51
Speaker
to be outspoken, to be courageous, to inspire others. And we oftentimes think that means by being an effective public speaker, by speaking out, by being out there. And what I found is that I've been most effective as a leader when I actively listened and learned from others. And when I think about
00:55:16
Speaker
listening. It's listening to everyone. It's listening to the people that we're serving, our entrepreneurs, and hearing their stories and really understanding the problems they face. And it's listening to my team and being out in the field with my team and hearing how they see the problems that they're facing when they're working with the population and really hearing
00:55:39
Speaker
their recommendations and what we should do differently. It's listening to our partners and what they have to say about what it's like to partner with Village Enterprise and how we can be better partners. It's listening to donors and hearing
00:55:55
Speaker
what matters most to them and why they give to Village Enterprise. And it's listening to my board and understanding what advice they have for me and how I can be a better leader of this organization. And so I would say that really is the most important advice I would give myself.
00:56:16
Speaker
Diane, this has been such an inspiring conversation. Thank you so much for sharing your personal story as well with such candor. And as we come to a close, what is one thing you would like listeners to take away from this conversation? Give us one final thought or reflection.
00:56:33
Speaker
As I mentioned at the beginning, I think my superpower is this intersection of perseverance and optimism. And I would like to leave with that. It really is possible to eradicate poverty. And there has been so much progress. I think people don't realize how much progress has been made, but we must keep persevering. And I mentioned my role model, Nelson Mandela, and he said a quote that I just love. He said,
00:57:03
Speaker
that overcoming poverty is not a task of charity. It's an act of justice. Like slavery and apartheid, poverty is not natural. We know that it's man-made and can be overcome and eradicated by the actions of human beings. And he ended with saying, sometimes it falls on a generation to be great. You can be that great generation. And that's what I'd like to leave you with.
00:57:32
Speaker
And on that beautiful note, Diane, thank you so much for being a guest on the show. Thank you. Thank you. It's been such a pleasure.
00:57:43
Speaker
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