Ep 49. Dianne Calvi, President & CEO Village Enterprise: Full bellies and big dreams!

About this episode

Dianne Calvi discusses Village Enterprise's mission to lift 20 million people out of extreme poverty in Africa by 2030 through entrepreneurship and innovation.

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…

People in this episode

Host: Dhivya O'Connor

Guest: Dianne Calvi

Topics covered

• poverty alleviation
• entrepreneurship
• collective action
• innovation
• Africa
• sustainable development

Keywords

• extreme poverty
• Village Enterprise
• Ubuntu
• Poverty Graduation Model
• entrepreneurs
• climate-smart businesses
• Rwanda
• USAID

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Village Enterprise, USAID, French government, Rwandan government

Places: Africa

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