Powering entrepreneurs to end poverty.
We believe markets are the most powerful tool for creating prosperity, building resilience, and ultimately ending poverty.
Our Impact Model—
Infinite
Our Infinite Model provides a roadmap for how individuals can participate in the marketplace and move through a process of growth, establishing profitable livelihoods.
Explore our Infinite ModelWhat We Do—
Market ecosystems that adapt and grow to benefit everyone
For developing world entrepreneurs to succeed they must participate in market ecosystems that are economically competitive, inclusive of all people, and resilient to shocks such as conflict or changing climates. By listening to every stakeholder—producers, suppliers, retailers and customers—we can overcome critical bottlenecks and develop lasting solutions.
Learn more about Market Ecosystem CreationAgriculture
Agriculture for Entrepreneurs
Any farm can move from subsistence farming to farming as a business with the right support. Farm Business Advisors provide an essential link between farmers and suppliers in remote areas. Our work in nutrition-sensitive agriculture promotes a supportive business environment for producers to deliver more, better, and safer nutritious foods.
Read more: How iDE increases agricultural incomesWater, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH)
Markets for WASH
When we told people that we planned to sell latrines, water filters, and handwashing devices to poor customers rather than just give them away, they didn’t believe it would work. But we’ve proven that it does work, and that it works better than charity, because when people invest their own money, they’re more likely to embrace the change necessary to improve their lives.
Read more: How clean water contributes to community health and well-belngNutrition
Nutrition for Families
iDE works to develop a supportive environment for communities to have availability of nutritious foods, maximized incomes for increased access, and information to support families to make healthy choices around food consumption.
Read more: How we incorporate nutrition into our programs
What It Takes To Do It Well—
Our approach is based on insights and evidence
At iDE, we continually challenge assumptions, make effective data- and evidence-driven decisions, and enable agile delivery of strategies and resources toward improved outcomes for our interventions. We also use the knowledge we acquire to design social and behavioral-change programming that promote the creation of resilient market ecosystems, which benefit all people.
Design
Co-designing income-generating solutions with people
We operate under the ethos of actually talking to the people we work with. Only then can we work to co-design solutions that meet their particular challenges. Using an approach called human-centered design (HCD), we create products, services and processes that fill gaps in market systems and help solve everyday problems.
Read more: Learn more about our work in designMonitoring, Evaluation, Research, and Learning
Pioneering approaches to evidence-based implementation
To measure our progress on delivering programs, iDE uses an integrated monitoring, evaluation, research, and learning (MERL) approach that seeks to meet our clients’ needs, while also offering added value for donors and stakeholders. With an emphasis on rigorous and ethical data collection and measurement, we are committed to multi-stakeholder approaches in our MERL work and to converting our quantitative and qualitative evidence into actionable learnings. We generate monitoring and impact data to guide program decisions, aiming to leverage the best systems and tools to deliver the right information to the right people at the right time.
Read more: iDE's approach to rigorous and ethical measurementMarket Engagement
Market engagement unleashes multi-faceted benefits
iDE has been building markets for over 30 years. One thing we know for sure is that every market is different. Replication of what works in one context is not a guarantee of success in another. We replicate our approach, but each context dictates a unique solution.
Read more: Approaches in private sector engagement, market facilitation, value chain development, and social enterprise creation get results
Our impact to date—
8,841,542
Households Impacted44,370,223
Individuals Impacted233.00
Annual Income Increased in Dollars16.80
Social Return On Investment (SROI)
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