Invest in community self-empowerment.
Invest at 6% interest. Or provide a grant.
Either way, you are investing in community-owned and community-run businesses. They are engines of community development.
11 community-owned organizations
4 countries
Partnering with communities since 2015
A community-owned business is the engine of the community's development. They build:
Economic opportunity, growth, and stability
Livelihoods, income and local wealth are created and kept in the community. Thriving community businesses' profits are reinvested into the community and into positive social impacts.
Community capacity
Skills, leadership and confidence stay local. Developed are operational skillsets, democratic governance, and self-actualizing prowess.
Social strength
People organizing, planning, and acting together creates stronger social cohesion and connection.
Cultural vitality
Local identity (narratives, values, knowledge and wisdom, foods, music, crafts, etc.) is enlivened, renewed and carried forward.
Fund the most urgent loan need
Women's co-op: working capital loan
Working capital so a women-led herbal tea cooperative can buy materials in bulk and fulfil growing orders — repaid into a community-managed fund that lends again.
How your investment works
Local embedded facilitators
A convener, listener, networker and coach who lives the context and stays for the long haul.
Education and training
Governance, financial literacy, planning and market access — scoped with members, not delivered at them.
Loans and seed capital
Financial mechanisms sized to the enterprise, with repayments recycled into the next community.
Ownership and decision-making in the hands of the community itself.
Because when communities own and run their own businesses that create their livelihoods and wealth, they become increasingly able to determine their own future.
Masters of their own destinies. Self-empowering communities.
100% of contributed funds go to community programs — here is how that is possible.
Administration is covered separately through volunteer time, in-kind support, and dedicated non-donor funding. We publish our financial statement status, including the years still under review.