Rural areas in Tunisia and especially in interior regions of the country are economically underdeveloped and have limited access to resources and opportunities. The rate of unemployment is high in these regions of the country, especially among women. Women rarely join the workforce and are not financially independent. Consequently, rural areas are stagnating in poverty and residents of these regions are struggling to meet their basic and everyday needs. To address the problem of inequality, unemployment, and poverty in rural areas we have established the Women Entrepreneurship Institute.
The women Entrepreneurship Institute is a non-for-profit that provides business training and incubation as well as a business network to rural women in underdeveloped areas in Tunisia to help them achieve financial independence and help their corresponding regions flourish economically. The purpose is to introduce them to the basics of how to run and launch a sustainable business in a new innovative way. In addition the classical business trainings that includes: ideation, business planning, financial and human resource management and accounting our start-up provides an IT training package that teaches women in underprivileged areas how to use new technologies and how to be more familiar with IT in order to be more open to the world and to have access to multiple opportunities. We are one of the first social enterprises that introduce some of the newest innovations and latest topics in their coaching cycles (sprints). As we go forward in our sprints, we will introduce the women trainees to the importance of environmental management in their projects and some manufacturing innovations like Polyjet 3D printing, vending platforms etc…
We are initially targeting women in the 24 states of Tunisia; however, our current focus is on the states in which women have no resources and face a lack of opportunities i.e. states in the interior. Our target group will be women who are at least 20 years old, living in underprivileged or rural areas in Tunisia where opportunities and resources are limited and who are either unemployed or underpaid. We are currently targeting 30 cities, 3 cities per governorate that are classified as underdeveloped. In each city, a minimum of 15 and a maximum of 35 women per year will receive intensive incubation in business, entrepreneurship and IT. By the end of every year, we will have reached out to an expected number of 750 (average) women per year who will receive the training. Among the trainees, a minimum of 6 businesses per state or 2 per city will be chosen to invest in through our network of investors, sponsors, donors and microfinance institutions.
This start-up will give women the power to follow their dreams and to be financially independent and to help them contribute to their community by turning problems into business ventures. Our mission is to give women, especially in rural areas, all they need, business-wise, to make their projects come to life and to transform their ideas into profitable businesses. Our vision is to see zero poverty, zero unemployment in rural areas and zero inequality between genders and between different regions in Tunisia and around the world.
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