Philip Gregory Van Kirk
Philip Gregory Van Kirk is the Co-Founder and Executive Director of Community Empowerment Solutions. While working in rural Guatemala in 2003, Greg sought a sustainable means to deliver high-quality, improved cook stoves to rural villagers. Greg recognized there was a need for a new, entrepreneurial solution due to a development and market failure. Greg identified a vacuum between donation and credit-based solutions. This was the genesis of the development of the MicroConsignment Model. Over the next few years, Greg saw that this new model could work for myriad solutions.
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- Community Empowerment Solutions
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- Model
- Hybrid Social Enterprise
- Sectors
- Global Health; Gender Inequality
- Headquarters
- Guatemala
- Areas of Impact
- Latin America, Africa, South Africa, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru, Guatemala, Nicaragua
Community Empowerment Solutions
Community Empowerment Solutions fills the vacuum between relief solutions and credit-based solutions using its unique MicroConsignment Model (MCM). Through consignment rather than loans, CE Solutions trains, equips, and supports first-time women entrepreneurs to create greater access to vital technologies, products and services at prices affordable to the rural poor in the developing world.
MCM entrepreneurs offer a growing number of appropriate solutions, such as eye glasses, water purifiers and improved cook stoves. They travel to different rural communities for two-day campaigns where they publicize and explain products during the first day and focus on sales during the second day. The MCM is a highly scalable local distribution network of entrepreneurs, and is thus uniquely positioned to provide essential products to rural villagers in their communities.
awardees
Our awardees
Fábio Bibancos
Thulasiraj Ravilla
