Prevent Trafficking in Women thru Entrepreneurship

Since September, our HERA volunteers have supported some hard working and aspiring women entrepreneurs in Armenia, Georgia, France, Moldova, United Kingdom and Ukraine.  Through entrepreneurship training, mentoring and grants, we are working to prevent trafficking and retrafficking and to address all forms of violence against women.  We also provide equipment to promising women entrepreneurs to scale up their ventures so as to employ young women at risk of trafficking and retrafficking and other forms of violence.

Here is a brief update of our work since September in each country:

• Armenia - With financing from Lily Xander Foundation, we awarded grants to 11 young Armenian women.  Gayane, a young woman entrepreneur, had organised "BeesArt."  She works with women in her region to produce beeswax products, which she sells in local and regional markets.  We also gave equipment to a group of young women entrepreneurs in a remote mountain village. They are gathering, producing and packaging herbal teas. All knew women in their region who had been trafficked.  We provided a grant to a local NGO trainer who works with young Syrian women refugees, who have fled to  Armenia, and with other ethnic minority women to produce ornaments to sell in the annual Yerevan holiday market. In collaboartion with Luys Foundation, during our visit, we trained 12 women on entrepreneurship in Yerevan.  The trainees were primarily young women who had recently exited an orphanage and two Armenian social workers, who want to promote women's entrepreneurship.

• Georgia - We awarded grants to 11 Georgian women entrepreneurs.  In Georgia many young women from rural areas seek employment in the two major cities, Tbilisi or Batumi.  When they fail to find work, they may be trafficked initially to Russia, Turkey or the Middle East.  As we saw this past summer, some young women were also trafficked to London. We collaborated with USAID's REAP (Restoring Efficiency  to Agricultural Production) to identify promising agricultural ventures as Georgia is primarily an agricultural country.  Baia, one of the young women grantees, has opened a guesthouse at her family's winery. She employs and trains local, young women and is herself involved in her family's wine production.  At the end of the visit, we organised a celebration for all the women grantees at REAP's office in Tbilisi. 

• France - In collaboration with Le Bus des Femmes, we provided another round of intensive entrepreneurship training for five aspiring women enterpreneurs in Paris.  We also organised an online seminar on the trafficking of women in France and lessons learned from our pilot training this past year.

• Moldova - We provided grants to 11 Moldovan women. Moldova has one of the highest trafficking rates in the world and an estimated one in 100 Moldovan may have been trafficked.  One of our grantees was a 21 year old woman who had returned from abroad. She offers the only pedicure and nail services in Cahul and currently averages 45 clients per month.  We bought her a pedicure chair. Whilst in Moldova, we also collaborated with Centrul Regional de Devoltare Economica, the Regional Medical College, and Fermeriul du Sud to offer a one day training workshop to 57 young Moldovans (many at risk of trafficking) on entrepreneurship.  Our presenters  included a past HERA grantee, who came from quite far, to share her experiences and expertise.

• United Kingdom (UK) - In the UK, Sarah Videau, our staff director, organised 24 hours of intensive entrepreneurship training over several weekends for five older women survivors of trafficking and violence (ranging from 37 to 64 years of age). All women in our new "Wise Women" program wanted to launch their own business and had prior experience and/or a venture idea. We also continued to provide monthly, evening seminars for the 36 young women and their mentors from the summer on entrepreneurship and career topics.  Some 20 women survivors attended these seminars. Our new group of UK business volunteers are also mentoring the summer class of 36 young women survivors.

• Ukraine - We awarded grants to three Ukrainian women entrepreneurs. One of our entrepreneurs helped to organise a HERA event to assess young Ukrainian refugee women's interest in our entrepreneurship training.  When we invited refugee women at less than a day's notice to a HERA pilot entrepreneurship training, 27 young women came.  They asked for more training and promised to bring many more, young women to the next round.  We plan to return in early 2018 to award more grants and to provide a longer training for up to 60 young refugee women.

We promoted women's entrepreneurship in many parts of Europe this autumn to support women's autonomy and prevent all forms of violence against women.  We plan to do more work ahead in all six countries and are working with potential partners to organise a new HERA program in NYC.  We depend entirely on your private contributions and in kind volunteer support to run all our programs.  Please consider donating to HERA in the upcoming "Giving Tuesday Campaign" and this year's "Holiday Season".    

In this holiday season, we also extend our greetings and thanks to our donors for your generous support, to our volunteers for all you do for our programs, to our partners who make our work so much better, and to the young women entrepreneurs for your courage and determination! You are all helping to provide sound economic and entrepreneurial alternatives to trafficking and retrafficking and to all forms of violence against women.  We wish you all a very good Holiday Season ahead!