AWEP project advances entrepreneurship among arab women

In a little over a year, the Arab Women's Entrepreneurship Project (AWEP) — an AMIDEAST partnership with Citi Foundation to expand opportunities for entrepreneurship training for women in the Arab world — completed a first round of training and recently launched a second one. In all, nearly 150 women from six countries — Kuwait, Lebanon, Morocco, the UAE, Egypt and Jordan — are participating in these initial efforts, which are being implemented with generous support from Citi Foundation. AMIDEAST developed AWEP in order to extend its general entrepreneurship training programs to benefit women.  Although women represent over half the region’s population, they are conspicuously absent from its entrepreneurial ranks and represent only 28 percent of its workforce. For the target group served by AWEP — women who possess a strong interest in owning a business but lack the resources to start one or are struggling to keep a small business afloat — the goal is even more elusive. In the AWEP model, training is accompanied by mentoring and other support in order to be effective. The AWEP program begins with an intensive series of workshops that introduce participants to the fundamentals of operating a small business. Over the course of three weeks, they learn the “how-tos” of writing a business plan, developing a viable business strategy, carrying out a feasibility study, and navigating legal hurdles that may arise. Trainers also address personal development and management skills and cover the fundamentals of customer service, sales, small business accounting, and branding.  At the conclusion of the training, each woman develops a business plan. In the months that follow, AWEP provides a support network as the participants seek to implement their business plans.  Mentoring and follow-up sessions are two critical components, and AWEP members meet periodically to review their progress and share experiences.  They also utilize social media to connect and encourage each other during this critical period. Appeared in AMIDEAST Impact Newsletter, Winter 2013 EARLY AWEP “SUCCESSES” It is too soon to calculate AWEP’s full impact. For many women, lack of funding and balancing the demands of starting a business with family responsibilities are significant hurdles to overcome in the space of a year. Nonetheless, a number of women have already managed to launch businesses or expand existing ones, while many others hold to the promise of success.  Here are a few of their stories. During her AWEP training, Amina Majdi, president of a Moroccan women’s cooperative specializing in artisanal products, learned basic business skills that helped her improve the cooperative’s management, expand its product line, and boost sales. This made it possible for the cooperative to secure a government grant of land and funding, realizing her dream of building a center in which to house all its operations and thereby attract more tourists. “The AWEP program not only taught me the skills to carry out my business ideas,” she advises. “The skills I learned are also benefiting the women in my community.” In Lebanon, Samar Hamdan turned to AWEP for training that would help improve Made at Home, an online business that sells traditional homemade foods and artisan products in order to empower women in rural villages across Lebanon. Someday, she hopes to use her AWEP knowledge to open a nursery in her hometown of Tripoli; she has already written a business plan and secured funding from family members, but the project is on hold due to political tensions in the city. A visit to an exhibition on children’s activities inspired early childhood education specialist Afaf Balaa Zaidan to launch her own business, Junior Art, in Sidon, Lebanon, in 2001. She has managed to grow it despite hurdles, including the summer 2006 war, which forced a complete halt in operations. Thanks to AWEP’s focus on personal development, she finds herself more self-confident, less risk averse, and better able to handle finance and marketing. “The AWEP program helped me create a clear vision for my business and to develop new ideas and new relationships,” she recalls. “The guest speakers who are ‘mompreuneurs’ as I am did a fantastic job of motivating me and providing the inspiration I need to persevere.” Nolla Azar joined AWEP to develop the skills she needed to start an online platform for Arab women. The program has helped her in numerous ways. She has built a following of over 120,000 on Twitter, where she tweets about marriage, health, beauty and other topics of interest to women. Other efforts to launch a commercially viable venture have included publishing two e-books, creating a website, using YouTube, and exploring possibilities for selling sponsored ads and marketing the products of others. Picture the intersection of skateboarding, Lebanon, and a woman’s entrepreneurial dream and you’ll find Ameena Barakeh. Ameena is a 23-year-old graphic designer whose passion for skateboarding inspired her to transform her skateboard designs into a business.  With AWEP’s help, the Lebanese University graduate developed and implemented a business plan and successfully negotiated a profit-sharing agreement with a Canadian sponsor who initially didn’t take her seriously. “In AWEP," she observes, "you are part of a community, six hours per day, with everyone seeking the same goal of opening a business, succeeding as a woman in Lebanon, gaining a sense of pride, and creating a successful future in spite of the negative feedback from the people who surround me in day to day life." Nadine Said, a 28-year old interior architect and designer, dreamed of starting her own business but her early attempts failed due to a lack of business planning and other entrepreneurship-related skills. The AWEP training helped her to structure her thinking as well as to write and execute a business plan to start her own interior design business. She also learned how to deal with conflict and developed networking skills to connect with potential clients. “AWEP helped me to know myself," notes Nadine. "I am now full of confidence. I no longer dream but am convinced that I will have a vibrant business.“