08/10/2015
USAID HELPS OVER 5,500 UKRAINIAN WOMEN BETTER UNDERSTAND HOW TO SUCCEED FINANCIALLY AND IN BUSINESS
During the period of February – October 2015, USAID Growth of Women’s Business and Leadership Program (Go Women Program) provided trainings and consultations to over 4,000 vulnerable women aimed at helping them to become more astute at managing their finances, and about 1,500 women entrepreneurs across Ukraine to help explain how to start-up and manage a successful business.
“USAID believes that gender equality and women’s empowerment is at the core of development. Empowering women ensures economic progress, families’ prosperity, gender equality, and shared opportunity,” said John Pennell, USAID Deputy Mission Director for Ukraine at a presentation held in Kyiv yesterday. “I applaud the women who took the opportunity to improve their lives and their businesses,” he added.
The Go Women Program seeks to help women develop their knowledge in financial and legal literacy, business and entrepreneurial skills, reduce impediments to women’s access to financial services, and empower women to assume greater leadership roles in business, civil society, and public service as a means to building a new culture of female business and civic leadership. The Go Women Program consisted of two components: one aimed at strengthening entrepreneurial skills, and the second one aimed at improving financial and legal literacy.
The entrepreneurial component, which targeted current and prospective women entrepreneurs, was implemented by Program partners – Extra Consulting Ltd (Kyiv) and the Change Agency “Perspective” NGO (Kharkiv). Since February 2015, the Program has conducted about 70 trainings and more than 20 webinars for about 1,500 female small business owners across Ukraine explaining how to establish, manage and operate a business efficiently through better planning, marketing, and access to financial services. The positive impact can already be seen: some Go Women participants have resumed their business; others have improved already existing businesses; while other participants have established and launched new businesses. At these trainings, the women studied business law, taxation, business plan development, marketing, human resources, and access to finance. Many participants developed viable business plans, marketing strategies, organized and improved business processes, and found new business partners.
A financial and legal literacy component targeted vulnerable women and was implemented by two other Program partners – the International Charitable Fund “Ukrainian Women’s Fund” (Kyiv) and the Western Ukrainian Center “Women’s Perspectives” (Lviv) – in 12 oblasts of Ukraine (Vinnytsya, Dnipropetrovsk, Zhytomyr, Zaporizhzhya, Kyiv, Lviv, Odessa, Rivne, Kherson, Kharkiv, Cherkassy, and Chernivtsi). More than 220 trainings were held for about 4,000 vulnerable women to study financial and legal literacy issues, such as personal finance, family budget planning, use of banking services, the basics of labor and family law, and conflict management.
“We are now moving to new opportunities both in the economy and in social life, where the development of small and medium-sized entities can and will surely be the driving force that will stabilize the economic situation in the country,” stated Head of the State Regulatory Service of Ukraine Ksenia Liapina. She added, “Owing to this USAID Program, women have gained useful and much-needed tools that will improve their access to funding and create conditions for the development of their businesses, which, in turn, will contribute to the economic revival of Ukraine.”