Blair aims to help female entrepreneurs
Britain’s Cherie Blair creates mentorship programme designed to empower female entrepreneurs across Africa.
|||Johannesburg - If you can help a woman realise her talent and achieve her goals, you can change the world.
Read also: Turning R250 into a brand
So says Cherie Blair, the founder of the Cherie Blair Foundation for Women and the wife of former UK prime minister Tony Blair.
Using mentoring as a tool to empower female entrepreneurs, Blair created a network across Africa and the world for them.
The aim is for the women to help one another's businesses develop and grow.
Yesterday, the power and reach of the largely online mentorship programme displayed itself through testimonials from local recipients speaking on how, in just a year, they’ve been able to realise their dreams, turn their lives around and have others benefiting from their businesses.
Addressing a room filled mainly by female entrepreneurs in Melrose Arch, Joburg, Blair spoke of the universal barriers women faced in business.
She said South Africa had the most women being mentored - 230.
Since its pilot in 2010, the Mentoring Women in Business Programme has supported more than 2 000 female entrepreneurs from more than 90 developing and emerging economies.
“There’s no doubt that there isn’t a level playing field for women, and we need to change that.
“Often women suffer more resistance from their family members than they do from wider society, from people who think a woman’s place is only in the home and from people who think it’s wiser to invest in men.
“Yet research shows it’s women who are cautious and pay back loans,” Blair said.
The programme uses internet technology to offer cross-border support, and through the course of the year, women entrepreneurs work online with a dedicated mentor to achieve key goals and drive business growth.
“Relationships can happen all over the world, and that’s the power of the internet,” Blair added.
Supported by the Qualcomm Wireless Reach initiative, Bank of America and Marsh & McLennan Companies, the foundation commissioned its first report on the results achieved by the programme.
Blair said the findings showed that 96 percent of the women reported gaining confidence, and 92 percent reported gaining skills that had helped them in their businesses.
The mentoring initiative also helped to boost business performance, with 76 percent of the women reporting an increase in revenue.
A proud Nonkululeko Tsita, a 53-year-old mother- of-three, shared that through the programme and mentorship she received from Bank of America vice-president Kathy Nixon-Bowdish, she had developed a compelling business plan for her Inzaliseko Foundation which helps rural youth in the Eastern Cape with career planning and accessing funding.
vuyo.mkize@inl.co.za
THE STAR