"En el 2019, ANDE anunció una alianza con USAID y la Fundación Visa para lanzar la Iniciativa de Igualdad de Género de ANDE (AGEI, por sus siglas en inglés), la cual busca apoyar a las mujeres como líderes, emprendedoras, empleadas y consumidoras en PECs de mercados emergentes. Como proyecto piloto a cargo de AGEI, cada uno de los ocho capítulos regionales de ANDE sostuvo un Action Lab de Igualdad de Género con una duración de 9 a 12 meses. Los Action Lab de ANDE utilizan un proceso de diseño participativo en el que un grupo de actores regionales, con amplia y diversa experiencia sobre un tema específico, se reúne para definir problemas para después crear y testear potenciales soluciones en conjunto."
"In 2019, ANDE announced an exciting partnership with USAID and the Visa Foundation to launch the ANDE Gender Equality Initiative (AGEI), which aims to support women as leaders, employees, and consumers in the emerging market SGB sector. As a pilot project under AGEI, each of ANDE’s eight regional chapters hosted a 9-12 month Gender Equality Action Lab. ANDE’s Action Lab uses a participatory design process in which a group of regional stakeholders, with deep and diverse experience and expertise on an issue, gather to define problems and then create and test potential solutions together."
"Through the support of Advancing Women’s Empowerment Fund driven by Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs (ANDE) and U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), Property Point developed an Access to Finance Guide. The aim of the guide is to address the obstacles that prevent access to finance for WSGBs. One of the key elements of the project entails to equip you as a female entrepreneur with relevant information as you embark on your funding journey. In consultation with funding experts and other stakeholders, we have been able to compile this useful guide to assist entrepreneurs when applying for funding."
The funding will allow four investors to advance their gender lens investment capabilities.
The 2022 conference themed “Accelerating SGB Growth in Africa” will focus on critical talent challenges in the SGB sector, as well as how SGBs can help developing economies achieve the U.N. SDGs.
"This guide for financial and business development services providers is designed to help you, as a company or individual providing services to micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs), to be more gender-inclusive in your work. Applying a gender lens to your approach and offerings will, without doubt, improve your service delivery to women entrepreneurs, your own business outcomes and the communities where you work. With this guide you will learn about the benefits of targeting women entrepreneurs and women-led businesses and how to tailor products and service delivery to them. We give you step-by-step guidance for how to begin to incorporate gender-inclusive strategies into your content and delivery of services, helping you to set the foundations for better overall impact and effectiveness."
"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.
ANDE spoke to Jona Resphiti of MIT-D-Lab about the organization’s ANDE-funded project under the Advancing Women’s Empowerment Fund to better prepare female founders seeking capital and support investors in bringing more inclusivity to their practices, including impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the project in India and an upcoming simulation of what it’s like to be a female founder trying to raise $5 million.