Women Helping Women in Business During a #SheMeansBusiness Workshop in Egypt

In Egypt, women entrepreneurs are often overlooked for funding by financial institutions in a male-dominated business world. Ensuring these women have access to financial skills and loan opportunities is a priority of CHF Management and Consulting Services Egypt SAE, which is Global Communities’ development finance consultancy in Egypt. In order to achieve this priority, the group holds a number of workshops targeting women who own businesses or are interested in doing so.

On April 15-16, 2019, CHF Egypt, in collaboration with women’s empowerment group, Confessions of a Married Woman, held one of these capacity training initiative for women in business. The free-of-charge workshop was held at the Degla Campus co-working space, a creative hub in Cairo for entrepreneurs, creatives and emerging business leaders. The training provided women business-owners with tips on financial literacy and social media marketing. Trainers for the sessions came from CHF Management and Consulting Services Egypt SAE as well as Ahead of the Curve, a social business dedicated to the promotion of sustainable management practice, inclusive market growth and social innovation.

Certified instructors followed curriculum from Facebook’s #SheMeansBusiness program, a global program that was launched by Facebook in 2017 with the purpose to train and inspire women entrepreneurs about the various aspects of running a business with an emphasis on using social media platforms.

The first day of the workshop covered the importance of online marketing, the basics of setting up business social media accounts, understanding a business’ audience, and how to tailor social media content for these audiences. On the second day, participants gained a deeper understanding of how to better manage their businesses, strengthen their banking knowledge, understand their own financial situation, and how to read and interpret financial documents.

The attendees of this workshop were came from different fields such as recycling, human resources, handicrafts, management, fashion and design.