Category: Women In Business

During the height of the Angolan civil war, Verónica José brought hope and entrepreneurial spirit to some of the country’s hardest hit areas.

Verónica José has an impressive resumé and considerable experience in social activism. During the past two decades, she has transformed the lives of thousands of Angolans through micro financing projects in some of the poorest and most remote parts of the nation. Already some 20,000 people, mostly women, have benefited.

Back in 1991, when she was just 19 years old and armed with only a degree in accounting and auditing, José ventured into the depths of Angola’s civil war zone. Millions had fled Luanda seeking safety, and José came across village after village of women—all the men and boys were off fighting.

At the time, she was working for the non-governmental organization Development Workshop (DW), and her mission was to provide microcredit loans to the communities left behind. The idea was to give women tools to help them turn their informal activities into businesses in order to help them put food on the table.

In 1995, DW conducted an informal survey that resulted in a programme to help women launch commercial ventures; this first microcredit programme was sponsored by the French Embassy.

“People were sceptical,” said José. “They thought the money would be lost because the women wouldn’t repay it.” Experience revealed the contrary, however, and the group has grown from 15 to 60 women.

Thanks to these positive outcomes, DW was able to obtain more funding, this time from the British government. This led to the formation of the Sustainable Subsistence Programme (SSP), which was supported by three NGOs: DW, Care International and Save the Children.

In 1999, a Zimbabwean specialist came on board to train microfinance programme managers; Verónica José was the first to complete the training.

“Those were difficult days,” acknowledged the activist and entrepreneur. They didn’t know the people involved, so it was risky. “During that phase, the project expanded beyond the Roque Santeiro market in downtown Luanda, and we developed more informal markets in the suburban areas,” she said.

At the end of 2000, the Sustainable Subsistence Programme arrived in Huambo, thanks to Verónica’s determination. Located about 600 km southeast of Luanda, it was in a war zone. Her father pleaded with her not go; the city was destroyed and had no infrastructure. To deter her, family and friends warned that in the southern region of the country, people didn’t have a business culture and that she was wasting her time.

“I knew that it would be a challenging situation, especially because I’m a woman,” she said. But she also knew that people in Huambo needed the help of Kixi Crédito, so she ignored their advice, left her two young children with her parents and set off to do her job.

Kixi Crédito is an institution that grants microcredit—a maximum of one million kwanzas, the equivalent of 3.9 EUR—to people who want to start or develop a business, even an informal business. Funds are distributed and repayment periods are defined according to the client’s capacity to manage their business.

“We have two types of clients, individuals and groups,” said José. The client must commit to repay the loan and have the capacity to develop the business and improve the life of the community. “In the case of a group, say one made up of three members, they must all guarantee the loan. This means that if one of them can’t repay his or her share, the others repay it for him or her. This brings a sense of unity to the community.”

Looking back, she said that Huambo “was the greatest adventure of my life.” There was a lot of tension, but the most important thing was that communities there proved capable of running businesses and making the best use of the funding. The repayment rate reached 90 percent.

After three years in Huambo, José returned to Luanda with a portfolio of more than 15,000 clients. She was then promoted to credit operations assistant, and 10 years ago, she became manager of human resources. The team has grown, as has the number of branches.

Despite her important job in administration, she misses direct contact with clients and the challenges of those early days. “That is my essence, my DNA,” she said. “In Angola, there was no institution geared to microfinance. We were the first to believe in people, to assert ourselves in what has become an increasingly competitive market.”

 

https://www.kixicredito.com/

Now 64 years old, Nicole Jacquin has dedicated much of her life to the cause of improving conditions for elderly people at the end of their lives. A testament to both her empathy and determination.

“I didn’t want to put my 86-year-old mother in a cold, impersonal place where the staff are overstretched”, Jean, a 58-year-old bailiff from Greater Paris explained. Instead, last July he called upon Anggel’Dom, a home-based care service that’s designed to improve living conditions for elderly people wishing to remain in their own homes. Launched in 2017, there are four co-founders behind this nascent project, one of whom is a woman: Nicole Jacquin.

“Once I get an idea in my head, I have to see it through”, Jacquin remarked. That’s somewhat an understatement. Aged 25, she successfully defended her thesis in general medicine and embarked on a career in geriatric medicine at a hospital in Paris, before setting up on her own at 50. Now retired, she’s set her sights on revolutionizing home-based care. In 2006, it was Jacquin who had the idea of bringing dogs onto hospital wards, on a permanent basis. A “source of happiness for the patients and a way of livening things up a bit”, as she put it. An initiative that has since been recognized as bringing significant wellbeing benefits to patients, but one that was refused at the time by the senior managers of the hospital where she was working.

Empathy and patience

Having spent a quarter of her life in hospitals, in 2002 Nicole Jacquin decided to resume training. Aged 49 and the mother of three children, Jacquin began a degree at the École de management des médecins des hôpitaux (School of Management of Hospital Doctors) in Paris. After graduating, she managed various retirement homes in the French capital. But as a strong advocate of “empathy and patience” with the elderly, she found herself confronted with a mentality of “filling spaces”. Six years later she set up as a geriatrician, a profession that she had already been practising part-time.

Passionate about her job, Nicole Jacquin nevertheless laments what she sees as a culture of “hypocrisy around the subject of end-of-life” in France. The question is “often taboo and is rarely raised by doctors, despite its primordial importance; especially given that France has an ageing population”, she said. Determined to help make up for these failings, in 2010 she founded the National Association of Geriatricians and Gerontologists – Liberal Professionals, which she presided over for six years. This collective came up with a system designed to facilitate the sharing of medical data of elderly persons living at home, via a tablet. Through this technology, medical practitioners who visit the patient at home -doctors, physiotherapists, dentists- can record various data such as prescriptions, heart rate and recent incidents which enables them to keep each other updated. Since the tablet is connected 24/7 to a specialized platform, both family and doctors can be informed of any problems. The system helps limit unwanted hospital stays, as well as overmedication. In 2016, it was tested on 30 patients over an eighteen-month period.

Population growth

The findings were conclusive. Nicole Jacquin and three of her collaborators – one of whom was her husband – decided to commercialize the service under the name Anggel’Dom. An arduous task, hampered by “lengthy administrative procedures”, which was finally successful in May 2017. Initially limited to a few départements in the Greater Paris region, the start-up has recently spread to the capital and has a dozen clients on its books, scattered between Paris and Neuilly (west of the capital). Jacquin is optimistic, especially when she compares the cost of Anggel’Dom (180 euros per month minimum) with the fees of a place in a retirement home.

Philippe Taurand, geriatrician at Simone Veil Hospital in the northern suburbs of Paris, said he sees the development of this type of home-based care as a very positive step. Given “huge population growth, what elderly people want for themselves, as well as current technological progress”, this type of initiative is even a “necessity”, he concluded. A view that is shared by Laurence Plissonneau, Anggel’Dom’s coordinator, who said the system helps “save time and energy for everyone involved”.

Passing on our stories

In setting up this service, Nicole Jacquin hopes to not only improve end-of-life care for elderly persons – as she did for her own father, who died in 2017 – but also to prevent them from being neglected by their relatives. The retired doctor is convinced that “every elderly person has a story to tell” and regrets that “knowledge that could be passed down from generation to generation is being lost”. Her own family is close-knit and she confided that she has already raised the subject of her own death with her children. “They know that I plan to stay at home until the very end if I stay in good health, and if not, I intend to commit suicide”, Jacquin stated plainly.

Her hope for the coming years is to extend the scope of Anggel’Dom to people with disabilities and those suffering from chronic illnesses, both in France and internationally. It’s a natural step for Jacquin, who for the last seven years has been dividing her time between France and Morocco; a destination she chose for its gentle pace of living and proximity to Paris.

 

www.anggeldom.fr

Mona al-Khodairy dreamed of breaking the long-held practice in Egypt of restricting certain jobs to men. Her dream evolved into an even bigger goal: to give women new employment opportunities. While playing a vital role in safeguarding the environment.

Khodairy, a graduate from the Faculty of Engineering in Assiut, launched a startup, Ecotaqa, at age 26. It aimed to help solve the problem of energy shortages and solid waste management in Egypt by expanding biogas production. The technique uses organic materials from agricultural waste and animal manure, breaking them down in the absence of oxygen to produce an energy that can be used as cooking gas.

At the beginning of her entrepreneurial journey Khodairy was keen to develop her business with professional know-how. She underwent extensive, comprehensive training in a new program named “Enhancing youth employability and local economic development in Upper Egypt.” The program put her on the right track, teaching some efficient marketing approaches and fostering her technical skills. Under the auspices of the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Small and Medium Projects, funded by the Japanese government and managed by United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), the program provided her with an indirect financial support through widening her network and attracting potential investors.

“Peasants suffer from an energy crisis that has hit the country over recent years, particularly in rural residential areas,” Khodairy explained during a symposium in Nahdet al-Mahrousa. She noted that buying gas cylinders creates a financial burden for those with limited income, saying, “Some peasants asked me to build a biogas unit for them.”

The biogas technique also converts organic waste to slurry, a nutrient-rich fertilizer that serves as an organic substitute for chemical fertilizers without their negative agricultural impact.

These biogas units create employment opportunities – notably for women. Individuals, both male and female, can now create their own small businesses selling excess fuel and fertilizer that they produce with the units.   Khodairy said, “Some peasants employ a biogas system not only for increasing their crops, but also as an investment project to sell fertilizers to others.”

One biogas unit currently costs LE6000 ($340 USD).  According to Khodairy, profits gained from the unit can cover its price within three months or so.

Khodairy’s initiative has great potential, said Ahmed Huzzayin, an engineer and manager at the United Nations Industrial Development Organization. “Ninety-seven percent of solid waste in Egypt is not employed in a suitable manner. If solid waste in Egypt is recycled, 1.6 million job opportunities could be provided.”

The project took off in 2014 and Ecotaqa built 90 units in several of Egypt’s governorates over the course of one year. Since then, the startup has built more than 240 units of different sizes across eleven governorates, including Luxor, Assuit, Dakahlia, Fayoum, Qena, Sharkia, Sohag and Minya.

Ecotaqa teamed up with the International Organization of Employers (IOE) to train tens engineers and workers in the governorate of  Monufia, resulting in the construction of 20 units. The success of the first workshop with IOE paved the way for more partnerships in other governorates.

Khodairy did face some social backlash at first. “In the very beginning, I approached women as an indirect way to convince their husbands or sons, as most men in small villages voiced doubts about investing their money in a project run by a female engineer,” she said. This strategy empowered women in rural areas, who helped turn Khodairy’s vision into reality.

Once the project proved to be successful, she said the social barriers started to come down. “I was able to build credibility and trust over time based on word of mouth and the benefits gained from the units.”

 

www.ecotaqa.com

 

A socially conscious businesswoman takes a systemic approach to effecting change in Egypt.

Some social entrepreneurs create jobs; others work to preserve cultural heritage or save the environment. Rania Salah Seddik, the 35-year-old founder of GebRaa for Egyptian Treasures, does all three—and more.

It didn’t take her long to find her calling. After earning degrees in economics and cultural policy, she worked and volunteered for a long list of national and international organizations, from USAID and Doctors without Borders to UNICEF, always striving to advance social and economic wellbeing. By 2008, she had figured out how to bring all her passions together: She would create a company that would sell sustainably produced crafts made by Egyptian artisans.

After chosing the name GebRaa—“Geb” is the god of the Earth, “Raa” is the god of the sun—she began crisscrossing the country to find artisans who still practiced traditional crafts, some dating back thousands of years. In her travels, she discovered wooden boxes intricately inlaid with mother-of-pearl; vibrantly colored hand-blown glass; appliqued fabric once used on desert tents; hand-woven textiles and fine embroidery. Each had an incredible history, and she learned everything she could.

She also discovered the precariousness of many of these crafts—one artisan specializing in mother-of-pearl inlay had only five employees, down from 40. Among the many causes for this decline were Egyptian’s lack of appreciation of their own patrimony, their inability to pay for the highest quality goods and the flood of cheap Chinese reproductions sold to tourists.

Seddik knew that to effect lasting change, she would have to take an holistic approach; her goal was to help artisans streamline and adapt production to increase profitability and to find new international markets for their creations.

It was ambitious, but the potential benefits were considerable. On a broad level, her initiative would help preserve Egyptian culture and support cultural diversity worldwide. Locally, it would give artisans more income, respect and status in their communities, allowing them to transmit their skills to younger generations and create jobs. “I knew that if I could bring work to craftsmen in their home cities or villages, they wouldn’t have to migrate to Cairo or even another country,” said Seddik.

She was savvy enough to know that traditional items would need to be tweaked to appeal to a sophisticated international clientele, so she hired a designer to work with the artisans (more recently, she has launched an entire GebRaa home décor line). She also knew that ensuring that products were environmentally friendly, 100 percent Egyptian and fair trade would be important selling points.

After studying various options, Seddik made the shrewd business decision to eschew retail sales in favor B2B, attending international trade fairs and marketing her goods to importers, distributors and gallery owners—she now sells to the United States, Europe and Lebanon. In Egypt, GebRaa creations are sold at airport duty-free shops and high-end craft markets, and businesses often order them as corporate gifts. Currently she is in the process of ramping up her website to become a B2B tool that will cater to customers both in Egypt and abroad.

While GebRaa is now in the black (it turned a profit for the first time in 2017, on an annual turnover of 300,000 EGP), its success didn’t come easy and is a testament to the grit and tenacity of its founder. In 2011, Seddik was able to get her initiative off the ground thanks to an $8,000 SEED Award for Entrepreneurship in Sustainable Development. “But things were still very difficult,” she recalls. “So I entered a World Bank competition and won $25,000. That helped me relaunch my project on a larger scale. I recruited some employees and reached out to a number of craftsmen in other Egyptian provinces. I also reached out to members of the Egyptian diaspora to help me find markets for our products.”

Since 2014, GebRaa has been headquartered in the GrEEK Campus, Cairo’s first technology and innovation park. She currently has a staff of four, three interns and a stable of independent contractors. Her vision is for GebRaa to become the springboard for other initiatives; already she has launched the Karama Foundation, whose mission is to foster new generations of artisans through apprenticeships and continuing education programs. “We recently received a $250,000 grant from the Drosos Foundation to help revive Egyptian inlay crafts,” she said with satisfaction. “All we need now is government approval.”

More long-term, Seddik hopes that Karama (which means “dignity”) will help meet the basic needs of the communities where craftsmen live and work: clean water, sewer systems, education. Ultimately, she would love to see GebRaa make enough money to finance much of Karama’s work, thus closing the circle that starts with the artisan sitting at his loom or workbench….

 

http://gebraa.com/

 

 

 

Many people from all walks of life believe that business should be about more than generating profits. They feel it can be a way to initiate positive change, provide services for those in need, or develop innovative solutions to some of the world’s most pressing issues.

This philosophy has particularly resonated with women, who make up 45 percent of the world’s social entrepreneurs—a significantly smaller gender gap than in the traditional professional world.

Yet in social entrepreneurship, as in classic business, women still encounter many gender specific obstacles (financial, cultural, etc.) and difficulties to get their projects off the ground. More than ever they need successful and accessible role models to encourage and inspire them and future generations of girls.

This is why on this day celebrating International Women’s Day, the social enterprise Sparknews has invited 21 media partners, including The Nation Newspaper, to join forces and highlight often unknown and yet exceptional female social entrepreneurs from across the globe.

Supported by AXA Insurance, “Women in Businesses For Good” aims to reveal impactful innovations designed by women, and their potential to be scaled up or replicated elsewhere.

We are certain that you will find these stories inspiring, and we encourage you to share them (#WB4G) and bring women’s creativity and initiatives to tackle global problems.

Elaine Le Floch, Project Manager, and the Sparknews Team