Philip Gregory Van Kirk is the Co-Founder and Executive Director of Community Empowerment Solutions. While working in rural Guatemala in 2003, Greg sought a sustainable means to deliver high-quality, improved cook stoves to rural villagers. Greg recognized there was a need for a new, entrepreneurial solution due to a development and market failure. Greg identified a vacuum between donation and credit-based solutions. This was the genesis of the development of the MicroConsignment Model. Over the next few years, Greg saw that this new model could work for myriad solutions.