The John Templeton Foundation, in Conshohocken, Pennsylvania, has announced grants totaling $1.5 million to three think tanks in support of initiatives that explore enterprise-based solutions to poverty.

The recipients, each of whom will receive $500,000, are the Fraser Institute in Vancouver, British Columbia, which is launching a new initiative to measure economic freedom and the ways in which free enterprise throughout the Arab world is lifting individuals and families out of poverty; George Mason University's Mercatus Center in Arlington, Virginia, which has joined with the Free Market Foundation in South Africa and the London-based Institute for Economic Affairs to document the successes of African entrepreneurs and small businesses; and the Oakland-based Independent Institute, which is working to understand how market-based institutions are helping to reduce poverty in Latin America and elsewhere.

The What Works in Enterprise-Based Solutions to Poverty program is part of a new Templeton initiative conceived to promote public understanding of how entrepreneurship and market reforms can alleviate and eliminate poverty in areas of the world where it is most oppressive and endemic.