Women who received financial assistance to purchase equipment and materials to develop their own business also benefit from mentoring support within the project.
Each woman is assigned a specialist who advises them on general issues related to starting or developing their own business. The mentors visited the entrepreneurs and learned about the processes of product creation and sales. ОBy appreciating the situation personally, they better understood the women's needs and problems. Consequently, they can create a more accurate and effective plan to achieve their goals.
"They are all very different and each is at its own stage. Someone is preparing for the start of the season, someone is scaling their business and freeing themselves from additional responsibilities by hiring staff, someone is trying to increase sales. I process all requests and together we plan the next steps," - mentor Olga Kryvtsun.
"I heard from women that there was one biggest problem - the sales market. Regardless of the type of activity, each one faced the problem of finding their own channels for selling products. And this is a complex problem, to which we put the most effort," - mentor Inna Kovalska.
The winners also benefit from the support of three narrowly focused mentors on the following issues:
- accounting;
- legal;
- product promotion and promotion.
As a reminder, the WIWAT (Women's Initiatives Work Adamant and Thoughtfully) project involved internally displaced women who planned to open or scale their own businesses. After training and presenting business plans, 42 women received financial support to implement their ideas.
The project is implemented by the Light of Hope NGO with the technical support of UN Women in Ukraine and funded by the UN Women's Peace and Humanitarian Fund (WPHF), a flexible and operational funding instrument, that supports quality interventions to enhance the capacity of local women to prevent conflicts, respond to crises and emergencies, and harness key peacebuilding opportunities.
This publication was produced with the financial support of the United Nations Women's Peace and Humanitarian Fund (WPHF), but this does not mean that the views expressed or the content are officially endorsed or recognized by the United Nations.
