Hope Ventures is a US-registered nonprofit (501(c)(3)) that equips community organizations and churches across Africa, Asia and the Americas to become business hubs — training and equipping local entrepreneurs who create jobs in underserved communities.
In 2016, Mark Goeser went to Haiti to help children in orphanages — and found that three quarters of them had a living parent. They were not orphans because their families had died, but because their parents could not afford to keep them. Poverty had done what death had not.
He could have raised funding for another orphanage; that is what our sector is good at. But decades of relief had built systems people came to depend on without ever breaking the cycle.
Thus, Mark stopped proposing solutions and started asking questions.
He asked the local leaders: what do you actually need?
"We don't need more orphanages.
We need jobs — so parents can take care of their own children."
In communities where formal employment barely exists, a job is not something that can be handed out. Someone has to create it first — and the person who creates it is an entrepreneur.
Not aid arriving. A parent earning. A family thriving. A community flourishing.
Hope Ventures was founded in 2017 by Mark and three friends who took the need for jobs in Haiti, as in so many countries, seriously.
All four were Christians, convinced of the purpose and potential of people in under-resourced settings. People who were not short on talent, ideas or motivation - only opportunity.
Each country also already has churches, community organizations and local leaders.
People who are committed to their neighbors, who speak the language, know the culture, and have a trust that outsiders cannot manufacture.
They are not going anywhere. We were always going to fly home.
We have an offering. They have everything else.
