Delivering Resilient Enterprises and Market Systems

Executive Summary

The Delivering Resilient Enterprises and Market Systems (DREAMS) project is a multi-year initiative jointly implemented by Mercy Corps and Village Enterprise. DREAMS provides an innovative solution that seeks to promote self-reliance among refugees and host community members in West Nile, Uganda, by providing them with the financial skills and business opportunities that enable self-sufficiency and promote livelihoods.

DREAMS integrates two complementary components: poverty graduation (PG) and market systems development (MSD). The PG component, implemented by Village Enterprise, is a structured 12-month program that equips vulnerable households with the skills, financial capital, and mentoring needed to start and sustain businesses. Village Enterprise delivered PG to ten cohorts of 1,200 eligible households each, staggering the start of each cohort four months after the start of the previous cohort. The MSD component, implemented by Mercy Corps, encourages uptake of priority value chains through input subsidies and strengthens the broader market ecosystem pertinent to those value chains to create lasting opportunities for refugee and host community-led enterprises. In Uganda, Mercy Corps, in consultation with the District Local Government, identified poultry (improved breeds), sunflower, soybean, and sesame as key value chains with growth opportunities. The innovation of DREAMS lies in deliberately integrating these approaches, providing a “push” to help vulnerable refugee and host households become market- ready, alongside a “pull” from strengthened market systems to ensure they can participate as profitable contributors.

This technical report provides the findings from the first endline of a rigorous impact evaluation of DREAMS in Uganda’s West Nile region, assessing its short- to medium-term outcomes. IDinsight employed a household-level randomized controlled trial (RCT) to estimate the causal impact of the DREAMS program on household economic productivity and welfare, perceived well-being, social cohesion, and women’s empowerment among refugee and host households. Eligible households across Cohorts 3 through 6 were randomly assigned with equal probability to either receive the DREAMS intervention (treatment group) or the status quo (control group). The endline survey was conducted between April and July 2025, capturing outcomes approximately six months to 1.5 years after implementation. The final study sample consisted of 6,560 households (3,280 treatment and 3,280 control).

Read the full report from the first endline here