"Walk the street with us into history. Get off the sidewalk; stop being vegetables. Work for justice." ~ Dolores Huerta (1930-), labor activist, grass-roots organizer.
 

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Our Current Activities



Projects: what we are doing and with whom we are doing it

Here is a sampling of Womenable's recent projects and collaborations:

  • Womenable is working with Booz Allen Hamilton as a gender expert, supporting their efforts to assess the support environment for women's enterprise development in Rwanda and Vietnam, and from that work to develop a gender assessment tool that will build upon the organization's BizCLIR assessment methodology developed for USAID, to be deployed internationally.

  • Womenable is working with American Express OPEN on a new initiative to understand more about the barriers and constraints that women and men small business owners face when entering into the US Federal procurement marketplace.

  • Womenable consults regularly with the International Finance Corporation's gender program on a variety of projects to enable women's entrepreneurship globally. Currently, such projects include:

    • analyzing the impacts of informality on women business owners in Rwanda,

    • supporting the analysis and international comparisons of a survey conducted among women business owners in Saudi Arabia, and

    • providing gender analysis of a survey conducted among exporting firms in Tunisia, and the development of a resource guide for increasing outreach and suppport to women-owned firms wishing to do business internationally in that country.

  • In 2009, Womenable consulted with the British government on the implementation of targeted pilot projects providing technical assistance to new and nascent women-owned businesses in 4 of 9 regions in England. These pilot projects will be similar in some ways to Women's Business Centers in the United States. This pilot project is one of several key efforts underway to boost women's entrepreneurship in the UK, and is being launched in the wake of the publication of an Enterprise Strategy.

  • Womenable worked with Prowess, a UK-based association of women's enterprise support agencies, to develop a quality and definitional standard to be applied to women's business centres, starting first with UK-based providers, then moving internationally.

  • Womenable is providing consultative support to a pilot project underway between the Association of Women's Business Centers and the Organization of Chinese Americans that will offer entrepreneurial education and training to 30 Asian-American women in three women's business centers in the U.S. Womenable will oversee evaluation and analysis of program success measures. The project, in its second phase, is supported by State Farm Insurance.

  • Womenable is consulting with Quantum Leaps, an NGO focused on accelerating women's entrepreneurship worldwide, on the development of a strategic framework for women's enterprise development in the U.S.


Affiliations: our other 'contributions to the cause'

Here are other organizations we are involved with in the women's business movement:

  • Julie Weeks, President and CEO of Womenable, has been elected to a second term on the National Board of the National Association of Women Business Owners. She was first elected in 2007 to a two-year term; she will serve an additional year, from 2009-2010.

  • Weeks joined the board of the International Council for Small Business in June 2009, and will serve a two-year term. She has led the organization's Women's Entrepreneurship Committee for five years.

  • Julie Weeks is co-chair of the Public Policy Advisory Committee of the Association of Women's Business Centers. In this role, she advises the AWBC on general policy and connectivity issues related to women's enterprise development, and provides strategic counsel on advocacy matters.

  • Weeks serves on the advisory board of Enterprising Women magazine, and writes articles focused on international aspects of women's enterprise development on a regular basis. The magazine is now available online, which extends its reach to women business owners around the world.



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Last Updated: January 03, 2010