"The Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs (ANDE) launched the Advancing Women’s Empowerment Fund (AWEF) in 2019 with support from the Visa Foundation and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The overall goal of AWEF-funded projects is to address the gender financing gap for women-owned small and growing businesses (SGBs) in developing economies. The first round of grantmaking, AWEF Asia, funded eight entrepreneur support organizations (ESOs) in Cambodia, Vietnam, Myanmar, the Philippines, Pakistan, and India, as well as programs serving the region as a whole. This report summarizes the lessons learned from these grants."
ANDE is analyzing the promising project data from AWEF Asia projects, which concluded at the end of 2021. One of the early key learnings is that women entrepreneurs who participated in AWEF Asia funded programs reported increased confidence, self-efficacy, financial and investment literacy, and ability to critically evaluate potential investment and financing options.
We're exploring how ANDE members in East and Southeast Asia navigate through the digital world in our new video series ‘Exploring Digitalization Journeys.’
We featured ANDE members and their entrepreneurs in our communications series ‘Exploring Digitalization Journeys’. This blog meets entrepreneurs of Mercy Corps Indonesia, an international non-profit organization founded in 1979 that has helped people in vulnerable areas; 42 countries and has helped more than 19 million people improve their quality of life.
We featured ANDE members and their entrepreneurs in our communications series ‘Exploring Digitalization Journeys’. This blog meets ONOW Myanmar, a social enterprise committed to delivering financially sustainable positive change in the lives of the entrepreneurs they work with, to hear how they digitally support entrepreneurs in Myanmar.
Southeast Asia is one of the fastest-growing regions in the world, with a total GDP of over USD 2.7 trillion. However, its progress is threatened by the increasingly adverse impacts of climate change. Entrepreneurship has a leading role in developing solutions to both mitigate and adapt to climate change. This report evaluates the current support ecosystem for climate and environmental entrepreneurs in six developing Southeast Asian countries: Cambodia, Indonesia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam. Through ANDE's data collection and analysis, this report offers insights on the set of organizations supporting entrepreneurs that aim to address climate change mitigation, adaptation, and non-climate related environmental protection challenges.
Meet ANDE's newest member SHE Investments, one of our AWEF grantees in Cambodia, and their innovative journey toward economic empowerment for women entrepreneurs.
Learn more about Impact Enterprise 20, an innovative initiative co-launched by Change Fusion and UNDP Thailand that aims to grow social impact investment in Thailand.
ANDE believes SGBs can play a critical role in addressing systemic gender challenges and develop best practices to make the ecosystem more welcoming for women.