About Villages First

My name is Dale Hampshire. For the last five years, I have been working with seven villages on the island of Ambae in Vanuatu, gaining an understanding of the social, environmental and commercial challenges of economic development in rural communities, and developing and field testing technologies that have the potential to improve their standard of living.

I believe sustained development in rural villages will not be accomplished by dropping technologies into an unsupported vacuum. A stable and growing village economy needs to be cultivated from the bottom up, in a network fashion, gradually becoming more and more diversified, and directed toward local needs.

My approach is trade-based – trade between villages, between villages and the center, and within villages between neighbours. It is village enterprise based. A village’s economy develops, and this development is sustained, through the exchange of value.

Villages First Ltd is my company. It is a Canadian corporation devoted to bringing about sustained economic development in rural communities. Through Villages First, I hope to address and overcome the challenges faced by these communities. My focus has been on Vanuatu, and the remote villages there. But I expect that the success achieved there will be able to be replicated elsewhere – this is my personal goal.

Over the last 30 years Dale Hampshire has managed a variety of businesses, mainly new start-ups or turnarounds. Between 1987 and 1995, he worked in the Republic of Vanuatu, first as a school teacher, then as an advisor to the Director of Industry, Trade and Commerce. In 1993, Dale established Vanuatu Coconut Products on the island of Espiritu Santo, a coconut oil mill producing 25 tonnes of soap per month for the local market. He has three university degrees; MBA (specialization in sustainable development, 2005), B.Ed. (math and sciences, 1987), and B.Sc. (ecology, 1985). For the last 8 years, Dale has worked as the manager of Stampin’ Up! Canada - a company that has assisted more than 10,000 Canadian women to start their own home-based business in the paper crafting industry.