According to Canadian Business Magazine, around half of all small businesses fail within the first six years.
It’s important for women’s businesses to get the right help at the right time. That’s why we decided to launch Tools for Sustainability for Women-Centred CED (Community Economic Development), a project designed to help women build social enterprises that make sense long-term.
One of the biggest achievements of this project was the creation of a set of resources for organizations that seek to better women’s economic opportunities. As always, these resources are free to access.
- Women-Centred CED Workshop Outline: A template of a workshop designed to create dialogue about women-centred CED and to stimulate reflective practice.
- Needs & Assets Assessment: As assessment tool for organizations wishing to identify priority areas to work on in order to strengthen social enterprises. (Version française).
- Strategic Plan Template: A reporting tool for organizations that have developed a strategic plan.
Goals
This project had two phases:
- We provided support and expertise to seven organizations that focused on creating sustainable economies for women.
- We worked in partnership with them to help them achieve their goal of improving women’s economic outlook.
Our goal was to reinforce these organizations with all the help we could provide.
The Impact We Made
Tools for Sustainability of Women-Centred CED was even more successful than we hoped! While it was valuable to work with these great organizations, we also demonstrated impact on many different levels:
$427,500
In additional subsidies was raised across all participating companies.
36
Jobs were created in-house or provided through the project.
19
Of the projects’ participants are now self-employed.
43%
Of social enterprises reported an increase in sales, despite economic downturn.
100%
All organizations reported increases in participation by old and new members, both in management and decisions.
