WEB(Women Engagement In Business)

Women are most of the population in the world, in Africa and in Rwanda women constitute 52% of the total population (NISR, 2012)

Almost in whole world  whenever you talk of women many people suspect that you are likely going to talk about women illiteracy ,inequality, their poverty ,domestic violence ,their voiceless in making decision as well as resource ownership. In Africa, women are on disadvantageous side and the situation become worse when it comes to business ownership ,entrepreneurship and business development.

As ladies e-learning schoolings we want to fill the gap in Rwanda/Worldwide where our platform will offer business skills and entrepreurship. We will connect ladies to investors as well as grants. If our solution is scaled globally, we shall help many women and girls to get entrepreneurship and business skills to be self-employed or performing well in their career aspirations. We will work both online and offline.

According to  Elevate “Today, out of the 132 million girls worldwide who are out of school including 52 million in Sub-Saharan Africa alone 16 million will never set foot in a classroom “(Elevate,2019)

In Rwanda, 19% of population who are aged 15-24 faces major obstacles of entering in work force. Adolescent girls face the added problems of widespread early childbearing ,high fertility and gender violence. Most young women are less likely than their male peers to compete secondary education, limiting their opportunities and ability to work their way out of poverty. Low  tertiary enrollment is a vast challenge where only 4/100  children in Africa are expected to enter a graduate and postgraduate institution in which major numbers are boys.

Most women believe that they can not accomplish their career aspiration, can’t achieve their dream, can’t use internet properly and they can’t own their business and become the CEOs!

Few women who involved in entrepreneurship have demonstrated  capabilities of doing business  such as Oprah Winfrey who are among richest person in the world. We need technology that help disadvantageous ladies to get access to business/digital skills, personal development and connecting them to investors and grants to create their own business venture.

Government of Rwanda reports shows large gaps in gender and business distribution where a total of 142,029 businesses, of which 101,665 are male owned (71.58%), 38,017 females (26, 77%), and 2,347 with no apparent sex identity (1.65%).

Few women in the world have abandoned their traditional offices “the kitchens” and invaded the board rooms and big offices .In Rwanda, women constitute  more than 52% of the population but the majority of these are still in their “traditional office” due to lack of entrepreneurship, training, workshop, lack access to finance  and gender discrimination stereotype.

Our solution is combination of both -learning and off-line skills development that provide learners (disadvantageous girls/ladies) e-books, video/audio lessons, podcast in entrepreneurship, training, workshop as well as connecting them with the investors, loans and grants.

Entrepreneurship skills-Personal characteristics and interpersonal skills, Critical and creative thinking skills, Practical skills, digital skills required in business .

Training and mentor-ship-workshop and meeting with women who become successful in their venture.

Opportunities, loan and grants -connecting them with investors, financial institution, competition, awards, government agencies.

We believe that  that focusing on women in business will be one of the key means of attaining SDGs for Rwanda and Africa.

Our solution targets girls/women aged 16+ especially local marginalized ones who did not get chance to continue education as well as unemployed one  graduated from school. We will also work with other people who are interested to learn how to become successful in business. Our solution will give them access to both academic learning content , skills development content in entrepreneurship, access to training as well as connecting them with opportunities available to help boost their personal skills as well as to boost their financial well being in the following services

Entrepreneurship skills-Personal characteristics and interpersonal skills, Critical and creative thinking skills, Practical skills, digital skills required in business .

Training and mentor-ship- workshop and meeting with women who become successful in their venture.

Opportunities, loan and grants -connecting them with investors, financial institution, competition, awards, government agencies.

We will reduce the gap in gender and business distribution where women and ladies will be able to create their own jobs, becoming financial independence as well as getting innovation and skills in business sectors. We will help them to turn their ideas into profitable business ventures and exploration of hidden opportunities that create more job to other people especially youth.

 use technological tools(e-learning platform about entrepreurship),   provision pf training, mentorship and advocacy will fill the the gap where All service will  be provided online/offline using smartphone, computer, CDs, flash disks or SMS. We will provide workshop and training to clearly  for beneficiaries observe the gap in the society and helping them also   to meet with their role model in business sectors to share them with inspiration and their journey to success. We will make strong connection between them and investors, financial institution ,opportunities, competition to get fund to advance their business. They will believe in themselves and become financial independence. 

Our innovative platform and service  has the potential of being the right one that others in addressing the challenges of disadvantageous girls/women and other beneficiaries because female are not motivated in business and digital literacy because of lack of support/training programs in entrepreneurship as well as mentorship, advocacy  and access to finance and other opportunities that can help them to create their own business and create huge number of job opportunities in their community. All service will can be provided online/offline using smartphone, computer, CDs, flash disks or SMS. We will provide workshop and training to clearly  for beneficiaries observe the gap in the society and helping them  to meet with their role model in business sectors to share them with inspiration and their journey to success. We will make strong connection between them and investors, financial institution ,opportunities, competition to get fund to advance their business. They will believe in themselves and become financial independence

We will design platform that is based on Web(World Wide Web). Short
Message Service and USSD will be also used. We will use also hard disks such as flash disks, CDs, Memory card to make our content  be accessed offline. For those who access internet, will use website to access learning contents while those one who did not have internet will use flash disks, CDs and memory card  and Short Message Services to access our contents
offline. They will be connected to investors through website or by short message services. We also have Flash discs and CDs as an option to store our content especially videos, eBooks etc for communities that may not be able to access the internet or those who may not access computers as well as using projectors to present about our contents in training ,workshop and mentor-ship program.

Today, most people are taking online courses for certification to advance their career and internet and social media have big impacts to share contents to huge number of people. Computers and smartphone are widely used in our country and they are playing big impact in both urban and rural areas especially in the services provided by government. We will use this benefit to help women to get contents that are related to business skills. USSD and Short Message Services are widely used by consumer of MTN,TIGO and AIRTEL for multiple services such as checking airtime, mobile money and getting notice from government agencies. We will use this technology to provide skills and benefits to beneficiaries.

Here is a demo of USSD in action https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EnIKUQdh8I

After getting  all stakeholders get   access to both academic learning content , skills development content in entrepreneurship,  training , connected to opportunities available to boost  personal skills as well as to boost their financial well being we will reduce financial problem for starting and growing businesses, lack of business and marketing skills, combining family responsibilities and business life, insufficient business information, lack of ICT skills and all those impacts negatively the success of women businesses. Where we will  expand market for women entrepreneurs in Rwanda, by increasing the number of trade fairs and provide support for women entrepreneurs to participate in many trade fairs since it is an opportunity for marketing women entrepreneurs' Products. We will  increase  training and workshop for women entrepreneurs in communication skills, Business plan, ICT use in their activities, training related to their type of business as well as  training that will help women to start and expand their business, management and technical skills entrepreneurs. This will create huge number of  jobs and well as being one of the key means of attaining SDGs for Rwanda and Africa.

The current system is in development and does not server the public in any current minor.

One-year projection would be approx. 2,0000  beneficiaries and stakeholders

Five-year projection would be  above 1,000,000,beneficiaries and  stakeholders across Africa,  and other parts of the world 

Our 1-year goals are the following

Having designed platform secured with only lessons related to entrepreneurship skills   and launching our service in English, Kinyarwanda, French and Kiswahili language to reach maximum people with technology  as well as making advertisement to have many beneficiaries.

Finding and intensification of partnership  of beneficiaries ,with higher learning institutions, local authorities, tutors, mentors, women CEOs, financial institutions as well as private institutions and NGOs.

Addition of opportunities and grants  platform with contents for grants and other opportunities available.

Growing to impact 1000 users on our platform and 1000 users of our service offline.

Five years goals are the following

 Creating  huge number of employment opportunities of women  through their skills and opportunities   in generating multiple income to all stakeholders especially those who were neglected in getting  fundamental for starting and running business and funds for their  business venture across Africa and other continents.

 Expanding our service to more than  1,000,000 women and ladies and other stakeholders across Africa and other peat of the world.

We have the barriers of women/ladies’ ignorance in using ICT  for taking online lessons and services it provides. Low capital from our project and inability of beneficiaries  to attract any grants because sometimes they are unnoticed in the eyes of donors and banks consider them as people who are not bankable so that to get loan become more problems. Technical assistance from experts are still low and there is need of support from them to develop strong and secured  platform . Marketing is challenging such as to advertise our service to other part of the country. Competition with other solution become also challenge. Lack of access to enough finance; we are lacking enough money to develop the implementation of our solution.Market barriers: We need more communication companies to give us network as well as strong connection with industries, higher learning institution to provide us tutors

Training  women  about basic science on how  to use internet and provision of  other  technical support. We will request advocacy from government agencies  in finding out grants  of women both nationally and international in order to help them to create their own business to gain income. We will also build strong good partnership with microfinance, government agencies to help  women to get both capital(loan)/grants and other assistances. We also planned to show aptitude and impacts of our innovation as strategies of finding funds from other stakeholders.We hope to partner with like-minded organisations such as  NGOs that will be willing to cover some budgets/items on the budget. We also intend to raise funding to help us cover this financial gap. We intent to engage local telecommunication as well as international companies to offer us integration to platform such as USSD and SMS services.

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Our value

• Reducing the gap of women in business sector
• Equipping women with required knowledge for starting and running their own business
• Becoming the top solution in provision of learning and entrepreneurship skills to women and other people in the world.

In order to perform well our business, we plan various ways for resources mobilization and funding acquisition as follows; donations and grants, selling some services through premium subscription , raising investment capital, or a combination of all.  Also Raising grants from stakeholders would be  part of funding program . Once we get registered from government licensing and raising investment capital will be needed to implement our solution.

MIT   can provide us  technical assistance as well as  innovation skills. MIT could help us to get funding by levering financing partnership with MIT SOLVE donor fund , directing us to right film where we can get funding as well as providing networking because there are many institutions that can help us.We would like to be part of Solve's community where we believe we can get more opportunities to learn from other industry experts as well as get expert advice from trusted and well-intended sources. We also hope to get marketing opportunities for our solution through leveraging Solve's digital marketing channels among others.We also hope to win some of the cash awards offered by Solve and its partners and this would be an opportunity for us to grow our impact.

We would like partners to support us with marketing, media and exposure because this is one way to get us discovered by more beneficiaries out there, potential granters as well as potential investors. We also need refinement in our revenue model as well as support in how to get funding for our initiative.

We will be grateful to partner with   business schools in US and business venture
lead by women as well as  MIT faculty because we
believe they are experts in academia and hence their guidance and expert advice
would help us achieve great success in guiding us ,we would like to partner with some potential
organisations that are equally focused on e-learning and skills development so
that we can support each other in different ways.

Since we offer skills development in entrepreneurship skills that can be used by disadvantageous people such as refuge and their hosts for, we believe this is one sure way of advancing economic and financial inclusion of the refugees as well as for their hosts. especially women.We intend to use this prize to boost our skills development efforts by developing more content which will cover more entrepreneurship categories. This would give refugees a wider pool of skills development lessons/tutorials to learn from. So that they can create their own job. We plan to tutor refugees so that they can benefit entrepreneurship lessons.

We focus on disadvantageous women to create their capacity to create their own business so that they can be financial independence. We too use innovative technology to improve quality of life for women and girls. Through our skills development program, our focus is to ensure that the girls and women can learn entrepreneurship skills which would help them better their lives. We intend to use this prize to boost our skills development efforts by developing more content which will cover more entrepreneurship categories. This would give girls and women a wider pool of skills development lessons/tutorials to learn from. We intend to use this prize as grants that we can give women to create their own jobs.

Our Service encourages access to learning opportunities for the world’s most vulnerable girls and women, including access to digital learning and entrepreneurship. We intend to use this prize to help more women to increase their digital literacy and entrepreneurship skills with free of charge.We shall let them know this was as a result of the generous contribution from GM!

Our platform will increase literacy rates among women and advances inclusive economic growth through greater digital literacy and entrepreurship skills. Through our skills development program, we make digital skills development content that supports both young and adult women. We intend to use this prize to include more adult women as well as male adult more into our skills development program and offer them free access to our training content courtesy of Gulbenkian.

Our solution  plan  to use  strong data science, artificial intelligence, or machine learning in our online learning  but did not have the budget to get the right experts to support us incorporate these in our technology and workflows.We intend to use the prize to hire strong data scientists, artificial intelligence and machine learning experts to help us incorporate all these technologies in our services. We also intent to use the funds to pay for licences as well as learning tutorials to help us build an internal team that will be responsible for explicitly working on data science, artificial intelligence and machine language.