Delivering Resilient Enterprises and Market Systems

The Delivering Resilient Enterprises and Market Systems (DREAMS) program, jointly implemented by Mercy Corps and Village Enterprise, combines poverty graduation with market systems development to help refugees and host communities build more resilient and self-reliant livelihoods. These reports present results from randomized controlled trials in West Nile, Uganda, and Dollo Ado, Ethiopia. The studies test DREAMS’ impact on household economic welfare, resilience, financial inclusion, well-being, and women’s economic empowerment.

Across both contexts, DREAMS generated meaningful improvements in household welfare one year after the program’s end. In Uganda, treatment households reported higher monthly consumption, asset ownership, income, and savings than control households, along with improved food security, financial inclusion, well-being, and women’s economic empowerment. In Ethiopia, both the poverty graduation and full DREAMS treatment arms produced positive impacts on consumption, assets, income, savings, food security, and well-being, with few statistically significant differences between the two treatment models at Endline 1. Cost-effectiveness analysis suggests that, if impacts are sustained, DREAMS will return more than twice its costs in Uganda and nearly two-and-a-half times its costs in Ethiopia, offering promising evidence for integrated graduation and market systems approaches in protracted displacement settings.