WOMEN ENTREPRENEURSHIP | Creating A Culture Of Enterprising Women

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About Women Entrepreneurship

The Women Entrepreneurship Program (WE Program) is a project by the Let's Go Foundation with the support of GE Money Bank Philippines. It aims to educate and inspire young Filipina women to be enterprising leaders of society. This program intends to address the problem of unemployment that college graduates encounter due to jobs scarcity. It also aims to provide a viable option for job seekers to become job creators through a heightened awareness of Entrepreneurship.

Part of the WE program is the development of teaching tools for women colleges. These tools will be included in the syllabi of their Entrepreneurship subjects. A baseline research on Entrepreneurship and student attitudes towards it was conducted to aid the need for this program. Through this research, we were able to identify what students and young business minded individuals need. The results of the research will be incorporated in the designing of a curriculum as well as related materials that will supplement the existing Entrepreneurship subjects of the different women schools.

The Substance

Aside from supporting GE Money's global recommendation of focusing on the financial empowerment for women, the program also supports 3 of the United Nation's Millennium Development Goals (UNMDG), particularly:

Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
Promote gender equality and empowerment of women
Develop a global partnership for development
Students will be aware of Entrepreneurship and be inspired to become entrepreneurs
Teachers will have materials to support their teaching of Entrepreneurship to women
Entrepreneurs will have a chance to contribute to society (as their own CSR)

The program aims to inspire and generate heightened awareness of Entrepreneurship to college students from women schools. It is also designed to supplement existing Entrepreneurship subjects of women schools through the development of teaching tools for implementation by facilitators, including professors, teachers, and volunteers.

The Women Entrepreneurship's Social Impact

WE is aligned with 3 of the UN's Millennium Development Goals.
WE is aligned with GE Money's global recommendation of financial empowerment of women
WE supports small and medium enterprise development to jumpstart the economy.
WE is a high-impact program that will help a lot of women students look at Entrepreneurship as a career option.
The information and education provided by the WE program will be used immediately by women schools, which have placed Entrepreneurship education in their curriculum for SY 2007-2008
Through WE, GE Money Bank will lead, inspire and encourage other women-owned enterprises to advocate Entrepreneurship as their CSR.

About LETS GO Foundation

Let's Go (Leading Entrepreneurs Towards Seizing Global Opportunities) Foundation is a non-stock, non-profit organization that focuses on Entrepreneurship Education. The members of this foundation are academicians and established entrepreneurs.

The team is headed by Prof. Francisco M. Bernardo lll, a professor of the Asian Institute of Management and Assumption College and the CEO of JAD Group of Companies. Prof. Bernardo received various awards in the field of Entrepreneurship:

Outstanding Leadership in the Field of Business Creativity and Entrepreneurship 2005
Ten Outstanding Young Persons of the World 2004
Ten Outstanding Young Men of the Philippines 2003
Agora Award for Outstanding Achievement in Entrepreneurship 2002

According to Prof. Bernardo, "An entrepreneurial culture will help uplift the quality of life of women, including their family, community, and aid in the economic development of the country." He also mentioned that, "A recent study shows that 43 percent of women entrepreneurs surveyed find the professor teaching the subjects as the process most useful in growing their businesses against the common notion that workshops are the most effective tools. It is therefore essential to optimize the learning experience of every aspiring entrepreneur by equipping teachers with the right classroom materials".

Partnerships

The Lets Go Foundation has invited possible partner organizations such as the International Labour Organization, Department of Education, Consortium of Women's Colleges and Network of Enterprising Women to collaborate on this project.

The Let's Go Foundation, in cooperation with GE Money Bank is also developing a teaching program to be rolled out to pilot schools in 2007. Based on the results of the pilot, the program will be refined and enhanced for wider implementation across the country, targeting women's colleges in the future. " We look at the program as a long term development opportunity that will encourage women Entrepreneurship in the Philippines. GE Money is committed to support this initiative and will help roll out the program to more schools in the future," Tomoko Takazawa, Corporate Citizenship Leader for GE Money Asia stressed.