CE Solutions - our story


economic health energy education environment empowerment the microconsignment model microventuring community education community tourism where we lead where we partner where we advise our story meet the leadership
Our Story “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step” – Lao tzu Community Enterprise Solutions (CE Solutions), a US Not for Profit 501(c)(3) founded in 2004, is a social impact innovation incubator and implementation organization. CE Solutions was established with the goal of empowering business and educational entrepreneurs to make a difference in their communities. CE Solutions identifies, trains, equips and supports individuals and organizations to provide sustainable solutions that address long-standing rural, economic, health and educational problems. We change "obstacles into opportunities" by converting traditional relief solutions into high-impact and locally-owned and managed social enterprises and institutions. Social Entrepreneur Corps is CE Solutions’ sister organization that provides intern/volunteer and financial support for CE Solutions and our programs. Community Enterprise Solution co-founders Greg Van Kirk and George Glickley were Peace Corps Volunteers in Guatemala from 2001 to 2003. While in the Peace Corps Greg recognized that tourists were regularly visiting the Guatemalan town of Nebaj where he was working, but were leaving quickly without spending any money in the local economy due to a lack of infrastructure. Identifying a problem, he received special dispensation from the Peace Corps to invest some of his own funds that he had saved working in investment banking to start several tourism businesses including a restaurant, a Spanish language school, a hiking and trekking service, and an artisan store with local residents. This was the start of the Turismo Ixil businesses. The idea was to help the local economy by creating local jobs and to motivate tourists to stay an extra day or two in Nebaj spending money on goods and services. The long term strategic vision was to have local entrepreneurs earn ownership of the ventures through sweat equity and take over when financial and administrative self-sustainability was achieved. This “hand off” successfully took place in early 2004 and these ventures continue to function profitably to this day. In addition, Greg was teaching part time in a local high school and recognized the almost complete lack of resources. He also noted that youth were lacking many of the fundamental skills they would need to have an opportunity for future success. As a solution to this problem, with the help of other Peace Corps volunteers in the area and funding from the TIX businesses, he started the Centro Explorativo a local library, computer literacy and after-school center accessible to all local residents at no cost. The MicroConsignment Model first emerged when Greg donated profits of these tourism businesses to a wood-burning stove project. This donation supplied a handful of stoves to an equal number of families in a local village. Like millions of Guatemalans, these families had always cooked campfire-style on their dirt floors. Cooking this way had long been recognized as extremely energy inefficient and harmful to the health of family members, particularly women and children. Relief agencies had determined that the construction of inexpensive, locally manufactured, concrete stoves could immediately and dramatically reduce energy costs and improve the health and safety of family members. Greg realized, however, that merely donating stoves severely limited the capacity for distribution. Once the relief money was expended, nobody else could get a stove. Greg concluded that many more people could obtain these stoves if their distribution was built on a sustainable economy. As a response to this ongoing challenge he developed what would become the MicroConsignment Model. Stoves would be locally manufactured, materials provided to local entrepreneurs on consignment and marketed and sold to low income families in villages on an interest-free basis. The money saved in energy costs allowed the stoves to essentially pay for themselves as families made payments over six months. The health, economic and environmental benefits would go on for years. This model would not only provide an essential, high-quality product at an affordable cost to villagers but would provide new income-generating opportunities to local individuals as entrepreneurs. Soon after this initial iteration of the model was launched, George joined Greg to further develop and expand this initiative amongst others. Upon finishing their Peace Corps responsibilities, Greg and George stayed in Guatemala and formed NDS Consulting as a means to provide consulting services to USAID, Chemonics, Soros Foundation and the like. Development professionals working in Guatemala had seen their success in Nebaj and were anxious to contract their services to support their own projects. In March of 2004, they were contracted by Scojo Foundation (now VisionSpring) to work in El Salvador to help them find an effective way to distribute reading glasses to low income villagers. It is estimated that over 90 percent of people over 40 years old will need near-vision reading glasses to see up close. VisionSpring was utilizing a micro-credit model at the time to provide local women with a means to distribute the glasses but it wasn’t working effectively. Greg and George noted that micro-credit is very effective for people who already have established businesses and purchase raw materials from a local distributor to meet unmet demand. However, selling reading glasses, much the same as selling wood burning stoves, requires a different approach. Due to the fact that awareness needs to be created, a high quality service is the driver, there are no local distributors, training is essential and the perceived and real financial risk for potential entrepreneurs is very high, they concluded that micro-credit was a suboptimal model to achieve VisionSpring’s desired outcomes. Micro-credit is generally neutral regarding what an entrepreneur's business buys and sells. Any effort to deliver new, “medium and high intervention” products and services to vulnerable villagers must first look at the villager’s needs and then inductively create an entrepreneurial structure that meets those needs. Greg and George concluded that the MCM could effectively mitigate the challenges that VisionSpring was confronting utilizing micro-credit. As a consequence, after in-depth analysis and testing, VisionSpring decided to adopt the MCM as its implementation mechanism. For Greg and George this was the “Aha!” moment. They realized that the MCM could work as a unique means to provide villagers with access to potentially myriad products and services that addressed health, economic, environmental and educational needs. It was this realization that led to them to establish the US non profit 501 (c) (3) Community Enterprise Solutions in 2004 specifically as the engine to test, develop, implement and expand the MCM in Guatemala and ideally other countries in the future. CE Solutions was also formed to support the TIX businesses and CentroExplorativo’s growth. With regards to the MCM, their concept was to devise a way to create national scale and local self-sustainability. The key was to train a growing number of primarily women entrepreneurs who could offer a growing mix of essential products and services in an increasing number of remote villagers. And as in the case of the tourism businesses, the concept was to create a local social enterprise, owned and run by the leaders that emerged through their entrepreneurial work, which could achieve financial and administrative self-sustainability. This led to the idea of establishing a Guatemalan owned social enterprise called Soluciones Comunitarias in 2006. The successful growth of the MCM in Guatemala through CE Solutions support led to a typical challenge associated with expansion: the need for additional human and financia l capital. During the first phase of this development, Greg and George depended solely upon donor contributions to provide the necessary financial capital. They did not, however, want successful growth to be 100% dependent upon oftentimes sporadic donations. As sustainability in the field was a primary driver and was being slowly achieved through the income that SolCom earned on product sales, they additionally wanted to create a sustainable mechanism from an overall organizational perspective. They solved this problem by establishing Social Entrepreneur Corps as a sister organization to CE Solutions to offer opportunities for students and recent graduates to intern/volunteer supporting the entrepreneurs and the MCM’s continuous innovations and growth. Needless to say this has been a journey. This journey continues with the fantastic team that is making this work a reality every day in the field. We continue to both improve our offerings in the countries where we are working and scaling to new countries and regions. We hope you will join us on this journey. back to top>>>

CE Solutions -"Changing Obstacles into Opportunities"

economic health energy education environment empowerment

the microconsignment model microventuring community education community tourism

where we lead where we partner where we advise

Our Story

“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step” – Lao tzu

Community Enterprise Solutions (CE Solutions), a US Not for Profit 501(c)(3) founded in 2004, is a social impact innovation incubator and implementation organization. CE Solutions was established with the goal of empowering business and educational entrepreneurs to make a difference in their communities. CE Solutions identifies, trains, equips and supports individuals and organizations to provide sustainable solutions that address long-standing rural, economic, health and educational problems. We change "obstacles into opportunities" by converting traditional relief solutions into high-impact and locally-owned and managed social enterprises and institutions. Social Entrepreneur Corps is CE Solutions’ sister organization that provides intern/volunteer and financial support for CE Solutions and our programs.

Community Enterprise Solution co-founders Greg Van Kirk and George Glickley were Peace Corps Volunteers in Guatemala from 2001 to 2003. While in the Peace Corps Greg recognized that tourists were regularly visiting the Guatemalan town of Nebaj where he was working, but were leaving quickly without spending any money in the Greg Van Kirk & George Bucky Glickley local economy due to a lack of infrastructure. Identifying a problem, he received special dispensation from the Peace Corps to invest some of his own funds that he had saved working in investment banking to start several tourism businesses including a restaurant, a Spanish language school, a hiking and trekking service, and an artisan store with local residents. This was the start of the Turismo Ixil businesses. The idea was to help the local economy by creating local jobs and to motivate tourists to stay an extra day or two in Nebaj spending money on goods and services. The long term strategic vision was to have local entrepreneurs earn ownership of the ventures through sweat equity and take over when financial and administrative self-sustainability was achieved. This “hand off” successfully took place in early 2004 and these ventures continue to function profitably to this day. In addition, Greg was teaching part time in a local high school and recognized the almost complete lack of resources. He also noted that youth were lacking many of the fundamental skills they would need to have an opportunity for future success. As a solution to this problem, with the help of other Peace Corps volunteers in the area and funding from the TIX businesses, he started the Centro Explorativo a local library, computer literacy and after-school center accessible to all local residents at no cost.

The MicroConsignment Model first emerged when Greg donated profits of these tourism businesses to a wood-burning stove project. This donation supplied a handful of stoves to an equal number of families in a local village. Like millions of Guatemalans, these families had always cooked campfire-style on their dirt floors. Cooking this way had long been recognized as extremely energy inefficient and harmful to the health of family members, particularly women and children. Relief agencies had determined that the construction of inexpensive, locally manufactured, concrete stoves could immediately and dramatically reduce energy costs and improve the health and safety of family members. Greg realized, however, that merely donating stoves severely limited the capacity for distribution. Once the relief money was expended, nobody else could get a stove. Greg concluded that many more people could obtain these stoves if their distribution was built on a sustainable economy. As a response to this ongoing challenge he developed what would become the MicroConsignment Model. Stoves would be locally manufactured, materials provided to local entrepreneurs on consignment and marketed and sold to low income families in villages on an interest-free basis. The money saved in energy costs allowed the stoves to essentially pay for themselves as families made payments over six months. The health, economic and environmental benefits would go on for years. This model would not only provide an essential, high-quality product at an affordable cost to villagers but would provide new income-generating opportunities to local individuals as entrepreneurs. Soon after this initial iteration of the model was launched, George joined Greg to further develop and expand this initiative amongst others.

Upon finishing their Peace Corps responsibilities, Greg and George stayed in Guatemala and formed NDS Consulting as a means to provide consulting services to USAID, Chemonics, Soros Foundation and the like. Development Recognitions professionals working in Guatemala had seen their success in Nebaj and were anxious to contract their services to support their own projects. In March of 2004, they were contracted by Scojo Foundation (now VisionSpring) to work in El Salvador to help them find an effective way to distribute reading glasses to low income villagers. It is estimated that over 90 percent of people over 40 years old will need near-vision reading glasses to see up close. VisionSpring was utilizing a micro-credit model at the time to provide local women with a means to distribute the glasses but it wasn’t working effectively. Greg and George noted that micro-credit is very effective for people who already have established businesses and purchase raw materials from a local distributor to meet unmet demand. However, selling reading glasses, much the same as selling wood burning stoves, requires a different approach. Due to the fact that awareness needs to be created, a high quality service is the driver, there are no local distributors, training is essential and the perceived and real financial risk for potential entrepreneurs is very high, they concluded that micro-credit was a suboptimal model to achieve VisionSpring’s desired outcomes. Micro-credit is generally neutral regarding what an entrepreneur's business buys and sells. Any effort to deliver new, “medium and high intervention” products and services to vulnerable villagers must first look at the villager’s needs and then inductively create an entrepreneurial structure that meets those needs. Greg and George concluded that the MCM could effectively mitigate the challenges that VisionSpring was confronting utilizing micro-credit. As a consequence, after in-depth analysis and testing, VisionSpring decided to adopt the MCM as its implementation mechanism. For Greg and George this was the “Aha!” moment. They realized that the MCM could work as a unique means to provide villagers with access to potentially myriad products and services that addressed health, economic, environmental and educational needs. It was this realization that led to them to establish the US non profit 501 (c) (3) Community Enterprise Solutions in 2004 specifically as the engine to test, develop, implement and expand the MCM in Guatemala and ideally other countries in the future. CE Solutions was also formed to support the TIX businesses and CentroExplorativo’s growth. With regards to the MCM, their concept was to devise a way to create national scale and local self-sustainability. The key was to train a growing number of primarily women entrepreneurs who could offer a growing mix of essential products and services in an increasing number of remote villagers. And as in the case of the tourism businesses, the concept was to create a local social enterprise, owned and run by the leaders that emerged through their entrepreneurial work, which could achieve financial and administrative self-sustainability. This led to the idea of establishing a Guatemalan owned social enterprise called Soluciones Comunitarias in 2006.

Social Entrepreneur Corps The successful growth of the MCM in Guatemala through CE Solutions support led to a typical challenge associated with expansion: the need for additional human and financia l capital. During the first phase of this development, Greg and George depended solely upon donor contributions to provide the necessary financial capital. They did not, however, want successful growth to be 100% dependent upon oftentimes sporadic donations. As sustainability in the field was a primary driver and was being slowly achieved through the income that SolCom earned on product sales, they additionally wanted to create a sustainable mechanism from an overall organizational perspective. They solved this problem by establishing Social Entrepreneur Corps as a sister organization to CE Solutions to offer opportunities for students and recent graduates to intern/volunteer supporting the entrepreneurs and the MCM’s continuous innovations and growth.

Needless to say this has been a journey. This journey continues with the fantastic team that is making this work a reality every day in the field. We continue to both improve our offerings in the countries where we are working and scaling to new countries and regions. We hope you will join us on this journey.