Education to empower girls and women

Cohorts two and three have reached the final stage of their virtual journey, with retention and attendance rates of 90%. Professors, mentors and coaches have witnessed significant improvements in the fellows products and ventures. Our community of professors, coaches and mentors have reported the program to allow them to grow and learn from the fellows.

Guided by our newest courses in Innovation, Leadership and Strategies for Renovation through the power of collaboration fellows have succeed at finding niche markets and opportunities, as well as identified customers’ needs and market trends, creating new products, business lines and renovating their businesses.

Some women have reported an increase in their sales in the midst of the Covid generated crisis through their newly renovated products and-or ventures. Others have reported to be facing extremely challenging times in terms of sales due to the Covid crisis, struggling to provide for themselves and their families. We have launched a task force together with Kalpata experts in design thinking and renovation, as well as students, to develop and carry out innovative strategies to boost fellows’ sales by building on current market trends and opportunities.

We have managed to launch a new cohort where alums and about to graduate women who have exceled in the program, developing and sustaining their small culinary and pastry businesses are the course facilitators. This has not only empowered them but proved to be an inspiring model to grow our impact as we build a community of social change agents through the power of the food industry. 

Through a series of cocreation and impact evaluation exercises, we have been able to gain significant insights on the contents and methodology of our courses and most importantly the needed skills and how to best deliver them to our students. We have started and are currently in the process of making the needed adjustments and improvements in terms of our curriculum, methodology and the classes topics and skills, geared towards best equipping women with the needed skillset to launch, propel and grow their own culinary ventures.

As a graduation project, together with our fellows, we have launched our first Holiday Virtual Catalogue with a variety of signature treats from our fellows, reaching a total of $7.500 in sales. This initiative enabled women to further develop their innovative products and brands. Entrepreneurs also learned work on how to make an efficient use of their resources increasing their profit. Women also further learned about customer preferences and adjusted their products to best tailor their needs and market trends.

Paulina Toro

Project Leader

Last august, we graduated our first cohort of women through a virtual ceremony in which teachers, friends and allies accompanied us. These women continue to be advised through personalized mentoring and have continued with their endeavors. In addition to the work that each one of them has in their productive units, we are working with some of them to plan projects that allow them to multiply their learning with other women.
We set up work groups with the participating women and graduates of the program, in which we also invite experts, in order to evaluate some aspects of the training plan and generate proposals so that our intervention is better and better with future groups.
Groups 2 and 3 began the third phase of the educational program this month, during this process they have had an attendance close to 90% in a program that has been completely virtual. The teachers highlight them as active, purposeful and creative women with a great openness to learning. A strong sense of community has been built despite virtuality, some are developing team projects and constantly share ideas to improve their ventures.
Twenty eight volunteers accepted our invitation to join as mentors of groups 2 and 3, to accompany them in the final part of their process, these mentors receive an induction and work in an articulated way with us through intervention guides. The task of these mentors is to accompany and support women in a personalized way so that they continue to shape their personal challenges.