Facilitating community wealth building: understanding the roles played and capacities needed by coordinating institutions

Abstract

Wealth-creating value chains are an emerging and potentially very important market-based strategy for addressing poverty in local communities. Crucial to the efficacy of these value chains is a capable value chain coordinator (VCC). The literature to date focuses on the value chain itself, and less so on its coordinator. In this paper, we utilize the insights of a focus group of rural wealth-creating value chain participants to identify both the roles played by VCCs and the skills required to perform those roles effectively. Our findings expand upon existing knowledge about the VCCs’ roles, and venture into new territory by cataloging requisite skills. We argue that the work of wealth-creating VCCs is best characterized as social entrepreneurship. This work has implications for enhancing the efficacy and sustainability of wealth-creating value chains.

Keywords:

• value chains
• value chain coordinators
• wealth creation
• social entrepreneurship
• skills assessment
• community development
• economic development