Women Entrepreneurs Prevent Dangerous Migration

The way to Kyiv these days is overland from Krakow and Lviv.  The skies over Ukraine are part of the battlefield. Ukraine's airports, except those on bases, are closed. For this HERA assessment, Giorgi, another Board member, and I met up at the Krakow bus station, only to learn that our Polish bus leaving for Lviv at midnight was cancelled.  Fortunately, an earlier Ukrainian bus was just departing when we arrived and the driver kindly sold us the last two seats. We were the only foreigners on board. Other than the two drivers, Giorgi was also the only man on board.  The men were at the front or had migrated.  

Taking a highway across the Polish countryside, the bus reached the border after 2.5 hours. The formalities on both sides then took another hour. The Ukrainian border station had large photographs of the war. A queue of trucks, vans, and cars waiting to enter Poland stretched for several miles. After the border, our bus stopped only once again, at a filling station with a small supermarket.  We arrived in Lviv at 1:30 am and hailed a taxi. The driver, who sped swiftly through empty, dark streets, explained that there is an 11:00 pm curfew.  The young woman at the hotel reception, had been waiting and expecting us.  

Early the next morning our first entrepreneur, a preschool director, arrived to pick us up. She ran an outdoor, year-round program and summer day camp.  Outside it had started to pour. The Director decided to telephone the teachers and parents to delay the opening.  She observed, “the children don’t mind the rain, but their parents worry.” When the rain subsided, she drove us to the outdoor centre. 

Despite the weather, most of the children and teachers had already arrived on time. With rubber boots, the youngest ones were enjoying splashing in puddles.  The Director showed us the new wooden platforms that HERA had funded earlier. The pre-school’s bomb shelter, was located up a hill in the basement of a former public sports complex. It was well provisioned with First Aid supplies but clearly not in use. Since the initial months in spring 2022 when a nearby military installation had been bombed, all had remained relatively quiet on the western front. We agreed to provide a second grant for the preschool to buy a portable charging station and sabre saw.  As our host explained, the outdoor facilities need regular upkeep. Each autumn the parents would help to repair the old and build new equipment. 

The Director volunteered to drive us around to meet the other applicants in Lviv. Everywhere we went in Ukraine from that first day on, past grantees, applicants, drivers, shop keepers, and staff welcomed us warmly. Several insisted on meeting and/or driving us to our next destination.  Their support made our short stay very productive. From 17 – 22 July, we met 14 women entrepreneurs in Lviv and Kyiv and made direct contact with five others.  During a day and half in Lviv alone, we met the women owners of an outdoor preschool, sewing atelier, café, interior design studio, and stone cutting operation.  

With young men are on the frontlines, women-led ventures have become critical. A young stonecutter observed that he could be called up any time and his wife might soon be managing their business alone.  The Government reportedly provides a good salary for those who remain on the battlefield beyond three days in a given week. To control costs, however, soldiers may be sent back sooner and the following week, sent to the frontlines again. Military salaries may not be sufficient to cover families’ costs. Thus, many young women are also migrating to Western Europe to work and send remittances home. While people are leaving Lviv and Kyiv to go abroad, others, such as a café owner, who originally had a café in Kharkiv, are migrating from frontline towns in the east to the two cities. 

By night Lviv was lively with young men in uniform and fashionably dressed, young women.  Groups of young women also dressed up to go out on the town.  The restaurants, cafes, stores, discos, and even an art gallery were crowded. By 10:00 pm, however, all shut down for the 11:00 curfew.   

At our hotel, I spoke with my daughter. In the background an alarm went off. “Isn’t that an air raid signal?” she inquired. “I think so, but people are walking around outside.” “Maybe you should check it out,” she suggested. Downstairs, the receptionist explained that a Ukrainian military flyover from the nearby base regularly sets it off. “But if you are going to Kyiv, you will need our Air Alert app,” she advised and helped me install the English version. She also showed me the hotel’s air raid shelter, a wine cellar.  “We will call if you need to shelter,” she promised. 

The next day, on the 18th, we boarded a packed, mid-day inter-city train to Kyiv.  The train stopped only twice at major towns.  The Ukraine countryside of rolling, golden hills of wheat looked peaceful, even idyllic in the summer sun. Now and again, the shell of a charred building appeared to remind us that the country was at war. 

In the early evening, Kyiv’s Central Train Station was every bit as crowded as I had remembered it before the war.  During the initial siege, the station provided shelter from aerial attacks. Its large, three-story windows were camouflaged in black paper and its chandeliers lit with green, fluorescent bulbs that withstand shaking. Otherwise, the station was little changed. 

Giorgi’s friends had organised a driver, who met and brought us to our hotel, in an upscale, tourist neighbourhood. The hotel turned out to be a kilometre and a half from the children’s hospital that had been recently bombed. Before the war, the hotel would have been too costly for our budget, but prices had plummeted.  The receptionist reported that this month’s guest list of reporters, diplomats, and military advisors, had come from the Netherlands, Norway, France, Belgium, Australia, the U.S., and Costa Rica. Giorgi and I added Georgia and the U.K. to her list.

The next morning, we went to a café that could easily be in London or NYC but was less costly.  As we ate outside, a young man passed on a motorised scooter. The wall of a nearby building depicted a soldier playing with small toy planes.   

That day and the next we visited several women’s ventures: another preschool, speech therapy centre, sewing atelier, kindergarten, and resin studio. Crossing back and forth across Kyiv's bridges, we experienced its ubiquitous traffic and enjoyed the beauty of its monuments from afar.  Faced with rolling black outs, we climbed 24 floors in 30 C (86 F) degree heat to meet a resin producer. The view and her work were well worth the climb.

A few entrepreneurs joined up with others; and some met us at our hotel. One described her online history project and another, her mediation work.  An entrepreneur from Bucha brought photos of her community café.  A founder of a children’s robotics program near the frontlines planned to meet us in Kyiv on our last day.  However, after a Russian missile hit their school playground, she had to cancel so we continued online.  

We met former grantees as well. One, who produces muffin mix boxes, faced a new hurdle in sourcing the paper cups from a firm in Kharkiv that had just closed. She proposed to locate the machinery and produce the cups herself.  A grantee and her husband drove us out of town to one of their pizza/hamburger outlets. Leaving Kyiv on a late Friday afternoon, we got caught in the traffic of people escaping the city heat for the weekend.  I wondered momentarily what we would do if stuck in a traffic jam when an attack starts (most likely abandon the car and head for the nearest shelter). The entrepreneur had invented new recipes and added a delicious sushi burger to her menu.  The next night, another former grantee, the Director of a Family Centre, and her husband took us out for gelato made by a couple who had left their ice cream shop in Odessa and started anew in Kyiv.

Our own assessment work was much the same except for the back stories.  The speech therapist’s caseload had increased from three to 30 new children/month; and she had opened two new centres. Some children refused or were unable to speak since the war had started. The Bucha entrepreneur had hid with her husband and five children in their basement when the Russians invaded. Not being on the main road, they were among the fortunate to survive. Families had been caught on different sides. The parents of one entrepreneur had stayed in Donbas. They had put all their savings into building a country home for retirement only to have it blown up by the Ukrainian Air Force. Meanwhile their children and grandchildren endured the horrors of Russian troops invading their town.  “We cannot discuss politics or cross our own borders, so we had a family reunion in Baku,” the entrepreneur explained. 

We went with the women entrepreneurs to shopping malls and hardware outlets to buy a generator, resin polisher, industrial kitchen ware, etc.  Other equipment (e.g., robotics equipment), we ordered online.  The generator will keep the lights on when preschoolers are forced to shelter. The kitchenware will help to open another community café in Bucha.  A preschool will build a jungle gym. More children will join robotics classes. While the equipment is useful, given what the women confront daily, our being there to hear these stories was equally important. 

I set the Air Alert app for Kyiv. It went off twice at night. Giorgi’s friends reassured us that it was only drones; and we need not shelter. Following an alarm, the app advises: “Attention, proceed to the nearest shelter. Don’t be careless. Your overconfidence is your weakness.” Without an immediate “all clear” the second time, I wondered if people have become overconfident; and headed to the shelter.  Giorgi joined me. We stayed awhile but were the only ones there.  As we headed back upstairs, the app pronounced, “Attention! The air alert is over.  May the force be with you.”

Leaving Kyiv, our train full of young Ukrainians and families leaving for holidays had a happy festive air. Our last night in Lviv, holiday goers were out and about right up to the curfew.  The next morning, we took the Polish bus back across the border, where we saw a line of missile launchers on trucks entering Ukraine. “Maybe they are from the U.S.” a Norwegian passenger offered.   

Putin had promised a reaction.  That night while Giorgi and I were having dinner in Krakow, the Air Alert app sounded again.  This time all of Ukraine was in the red.  Giorgi tried unsuccessfully to contact his friends in Kyiv. “They must have gone to the shelter”, he observed.  The app showed a couple MIGs crossing the country from the East. Shortly after, the app reassured us, “May the force be with you.”

Spring is the season when the HERA team sends out our new “International Grants Competition” announcement (see below) and application form to encourage women entrepreneurs in Armenia, Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine to apply.  We share the announcement and application with former grantees, local and international partners, HERA Facebook groups, and any and all who have expressed an interest.   

This year’s Competition again encourages applications from women-led, Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics’ (STEM) ventures.  Given rising temperatures, droughts, floods, fires, and other extreme weather conditions in the region, we also encourage environmental ventures. HERA Association members will continue providing volunteer resettlement support for former Ukrainian grantees and their families, who move to Europe or North America. This year we again commit to helping former Ukrainian and Artsakh (Armenian) grantees, who are forced to leave, to restart their ventures.  

Spring is also the season for HERA’s Annual General Meeting (AGM).  This year, the AGM was held in Moldova and for those who could not attend, online.  In preparation for the AGM and the 2024 Competition, we hosted a networking day for the Moldovan grantees.  A woman entrepreneur, who had received two grants, catered the event, and all participants benefitted from farm fresh, delicious food.  A finance entrepreneur hosted the AGM the following day in her downtown Chisinau office. 

During the networking day the HERA grantees shared experiences in growing their ventures.  A group of young women reported that “the transition from a hobby to a real business activity can be challenging. We are grateful for the sales but a lack of knowledge of the legislation stops us from switching to another level.”  They shared information about obtaining a patent for new inventions and products for MLD 1.2 million ($68,000).  Once registered, one entrepreneur advised, “you are moved by the wave.  Just start taking all the efforts to scale up and one of the most important things is to pay our employees.”

A second group, summarising their discussion, observed: “as women we work faster but not necessarily with less quality. Women had diverse experiences with the pandemic and with the war in Ukraine.  We were rethinking our business models, for example, selling grains in large bags but now in smaller bags and selling to shops, etc.  We spoke less about our failures. We are still young but had lessons learned.”  They also reflected that “my success cannot be compared to the success of the other colleagues.  Success can be a higher level of motivation, new jobs, increased clients’ portfolio, scale up – there are many different indicators.  Maybe we added some more kilos.”  

One woman told us all that neither her husband nor her mother, who laughed at her plan to open a business, thought she could be an entrepreneur.  She said that the HERA grant was the first time anyone affirmed her decision to move forward. Although some found our application questions challenging, they also reported that the process of filling out the application, was useful.  One woman observed, “applying for the grant pushed my development.” Another reported that on her first meeting with the assessment team, she did not receive a grant. However, they encouraged her to move her operation out of her home, which gave her the courage to hire employees and develop a profitable catering business.

The challenges for a young woman entrepreneur can be daunting. As one group pointed out, “What counted for being a woman. We were facing deep expectations, as women, to be nurses, mothers, and it used to be, as cooks; and there was always no more than 24 hours in a day.  If you think of the business as a child, the way you bring up a business is as you bring up a child.  The start-ups, younger women’s companies – one to three months old – may be limited because as we have less time.”

The women entrepreneurs provided advice to HERA for our work ahead. They wanted to see HERA expand our work in Moldova.  One group suggested that HERA organise two grant cycles/year with a second stream to support young women’s innovative start-ups.  As they observed, “Moldova has a young generation of women with new business ideas and models, and young women could benefit from more support early on.” Several were interested in learning about women entrepreneurs in the other three countries.  Along with country-specific Facebook pages, they suggested a HERA-wide page, where information could be shared and exchanged across borders.  As one group explained, “We are not just missing the money but also the ideas.”   

One woman concluded, “Thank you for listening.  99% of our time is involved in business and only one percent for our husbands.  You are moving us from the production line, and we can hear new ideas.   I never had time to think and reflect and I felt that I am regressing in my development.  I wanted to accept events that I was ignoring, and I understand that creative thinking is fuelled by that.” 

During the AGM the following day, HERA Board members took on several of these valuable insights.  Rather than adding a new country, we decided to deepen and strengthen our work in the four countries. We plan to support the country-level Facebook pages and create a HERA-wide one across the four countries. Our assessment teams will endeavour to bring grantees at regional levels together for networking and sharing ideas.  Being on the frontlines of conflict, we will continue supporting former grantees, who are forced to relocate, to restart their businesses. 

HERA has a distinct advantage for partnering with other NGOs and Government, which focus on training. There are few grant opportunities, and these may be expanded to encourage young women’s innovative ventures.  Two new members were elected to our Board: a Georgian entrepreneur and trainer, who has been involved with HERA’s grants program since its inception in 2010; and a Moldovan due diligence officer, who conducted our retrospective study of the Moldovan grantees and has participated on several assessments.  Finally, we looked forward to sending assessment teams again to the four countries this summer and early Autumn.