Empowering 50 women entrepreneurs to beat poverty

Dear Global Givers,

We are happy to present a brief update on how your support is crucial in empowering women entrepreneurs to become self-reliant.

While most people’s lives and work have been negatively affected by the crisis, McKinsey analysis shows that, overall, women’s jobs and livelihoods are more vulnerable to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Your support has been helpful in identifying the women in villages who have shown interest in building their entrepreneurship skills. Currently, 50 women have been shortlisted for the training on the basis of the following criteria:

• Literate and studied at least till 8th standard
• Active and aware of basic financial knowledge
• Have been active participants of group meetings at the village level
• Ready to move into other cities for training and marketing
• Expressed interest in local business and product

Post identification of entrepreneurs, iPartner India is in the process of organising the baseline survey to collect the data on various indicators such as the number of households in the village, village population, internet connectivity, education, accessibility to smartphones, literacy and communication skills, seed investment, an alternate source of income, if any. The baseline survey would help in assessing the increase in income of women post-training and entrepreneurship development.

The overall objective of the Entrepreneurship Development and Business Management training is to enhance entrepreneurial and business management skills as well as business plan preparation skills of the entrepreneur/women, individually so that they could set up, start, run business in a sustainable manner. With your support, we are committed to raise more funds to begin the training of selected women. From the batch trained earlier, one woman has started running her own fancy store in the village. Apart from this, 24 women who were trained have started selling sanitary pads resulting in increased income on a regular basis. Women from the earlier batch have also initiated a local spice and snacks making unit.

We are hopeful that the current batch for which funds are being raised would showcase immense talent and skills in pursuing entrepreneurship opportunities.

Thank you, Global Givers! We look forward to your continued support.

With deep gratitude,
Team iPartner India