Women Economic Empowerment

The Project will focus on women's social insertion in the new market economy in order to ensure their access to new income through own business creation. Support of the initiatives for enterprise creation will be provided through the delivery of individual business tutorship and consulting, managerial training and international market networking.

A special focus to sustainability of micro-projects and the mechanisms to overpass gender barriers in business opportunities will be made. Developing ethic trade is another important part of the Project.

The solidarity chain established by the tutorship system and the women oriented activities should ensure a multiplier effect within the country and is expected to bring to the economic empowering of women at large. Dissemination of Project outcomes should increase the knowledge of business opportunities in Uzbekistan. And encourage trans-national business partnerships between business circles of Uzbekistan and Europe.

1. Improve women skills for business development and financial management by:

- Improving their perception of the market through its legal and economical environment. This is the basis for the identification of market needs, the determination of the positioning to be adopted to address them and the understanding of the mechanism and conditions for success.
- Developing their market skills and technical skills (including the use of IT supports). Women, in developing countries, are usually lacking high level training in business management issues in a market society environment. They must be trained for enterprise creation to be familiarized with the different stages of the process. To ensure the sustainability of their activities, the Project should focus on communication and organizational skills.

2. Assist women starting-up their own business or activity by:

-   Establishing a tutorship system within a clearly defined framework, in order to ensure the long-term capacity building for the empowerment of women. The objective will be to have experienced business women serving as benevolent Tutors to accompany the women proposing projects, throughout the process of enterprise creation, and development during the first years of business activity.
-   Strengthening the training capacities of BWA through designing and implementing training courses for women entrepreneurs and leaders of business structures.
-   Developing and encouraging the adoption and customization of models for micro-credit. BWA has already implemented micro-credit projects that could be replicated and improved.