The National Center for Neighborhood Enterprise is built upon the concept that market principles should be applied to our social economy and that businesses should be looking for investments with a return than dispensing charity - or ransom - to protest groups. 

The Center's founder, Robert L. Woodson, Sr. believes the only way to effect lasting change is through relationship in which there is an exchange of benefits. 

The Center stresses the importance of faith - based organizations in transforming low-income individuals and in providing solutions to the most troubling problems of our society. 

For the past eighteen years, NCNE has worked to identify the change agents in low-income neighborhoods, strengthen their managements skills, and prepare them to partner with outside resources. Robert Woodson defines these change agents as "Josephs", an allusion to the Book of Genesis in the Old Testament. 

In his recent book, The Triumphs of Joseph (The Free Press, 1998), he shows how they exemplify the imagination, the courage, and the self-help ethic necessary to renew our communities. 

In Videofact's film Woodson talks about these '' Joseph'' and explains the solutions they have devised to combat crime and violence and effect positive change in their neighborhoods.