Why Rural?
We are often asked, “Why aren’t you working with large businesses in big cities?” It seems to make sense that if we wanted to reach more people, we’d work with larger enterprises in urban settings.
For one, we have always had a heart for the rural poor. We gravitate toward communities that have slipped through the cracks—from our work in the Tibetan Autonomous Region, to Northern India, and now, the Golden Triangle—our passion continues to be for vulnerable, rural communities. Did you know that more than 90% of the world’s poor (those living on less than $1.50 a day) live in rural regions of Asia and Africa, and more than 70% of them earn their livelihood from craft or agrarian work? These are the people we want to reach.
Another reason JoyCorps works in smaller cities and rural areas is because we see an increasing need to reverse the world's devastating migration trends. Today, 55% of the world’s population lives in urban areas. By 2050, this number will increase to 68%, or 2.5 billion more people. Ninety percent of this migration will occur in regions of Asia and Africa. Mass migration is a huge problem for several reasons:
There are often not good jobs for migrant populations in urban areas, so they end up at the fringes of cities where they are highly vulnerable to poverty, exploitation, horrific living conditions, lack of infrastructure and basic services, and every social evil you can imagine.
The world is seeing an increase in chronic diseases like high blood pressure, asthma, diabetes, mental illnesses, depression, loneliness, anxiety, stress...you name it. Often these are results of urbanization.
A common side effect of migration is family separation, and sometimes, the breakdown of the family structure. This has terrible consequences for younger generations.
Cities are struggling to keep up with growing populations, increased pollution, environmental concerns, increased crime, etc. Read more here.
We want to see rural communities flourishing, not empty. When we partner with entrepreneurs who bring opportunity back to their local villages and towns, the people are not forced to migrate for work. We are currently accelerating or incubating nine ventures in three regions of Asia, all of them working hard to create jobs for hundreds of local people.
And this is only a glimpse of what’s possible. In the years to come, we envision a growing network where those coming from extreme poverty have a seat at the table, providing key insight, collaboration, and exchange in a global movement toward economic stewardship. We see them redeeming traditional trades—like manufacturing, traditional handcrafts, and agriculture—leading their industries in creating products that are good for the world and good for people.
Our success will be measured by whether local entrepreneurs take chances on their dreams to start new ventures, putting hundreds of communities to work, in order to sustainably pull themselves out of poverty and resist structures of dependency and exploitation.
We've partnered with Goh (in the very back), an entrepreneur in northern Thailand committed to creating jobs in his rural village through his specialty coffee business.