ARLINGTON, VA - The John Templeton Foundation announced winners in its "What Works in Enterprise-Based Solutions to Poverty" grant competition. A $500,000 grant was awarded to the Mercatus Center at George Mason University and its partners, the South Africa-based Free Market Foundation and London's www.iea.org.ukInstitute of Economic Affairs for the group's recently launched joint initiative Enterprise Africa!

Enterprise Africa! field teams will work with entrepreneurs in some of the poorest countries in the world-South Africa, Mauritius, Namibia, Rwanda, Kenya, Botswana, and Tanzania-to understand how poverty can be fought on the local level. Successful entrepreneurs in these countries have developed their own workable solutions to problems of poverty, healthcare, political corruption, famine, and education.

"The western world's failure to spur development in Africa demonstrates that poverty is not going to be eliminated by ideas born of western elites at conferences on wealth redistribution," says project director Brian Hooks, "Enterprise Africa! will demonstrate how entrepreneurs are erasing poverty locally and share their successes with other entrepreneurs, governments, and international development groups who clearly need models that work."

"We're focusing on the entrepreneur because entrepreneurship is the true engine of economic growth," comments Mercatus Center President Tony Woodlief, "The John Templeton Foundation is providing seed funding for a long-term and sustained effort which will have a profound impact on the direction of economic development in Africa and the rest of the world."

The Mercatus Center at George Mason University is a research, education, and outreach organization that works with scholars, policy experts, and government officials to connect academic learning and real world practice. The mission of Mercatus is to promote sound interdisciplinary research and application in the humane sciences that integrates theory and practice to produce solutions that sustainably advance a free, prosperous, and civil society. For more information visit, www.mercatus.org.

The John Templeton Foundation seeks to support research and vision leaders worldwide who have the capability to transform the state of understanding on the subject of poverty in directions that will do actual substantive good for poor persons on a wide scale of impact. The Foundation also supports global initiatives, which pursue new insights at the boundary between theology and science. Using the "humble approach," the Foundation embraces a rigorous, open-minded and empirically focused methodology, drawing together talented representatives from a wide spectrum of fields ranging from cosmology to healthcare. For more information about the Templeton Foundation, go to www.templeton.org.

Mercatus Center at George Mason University

Mercatus Center at George Mason University

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