Deadline: October 22, 2021.

Women spend considerably more of their incremental income on their households than men do. When women earn more, they have more to invest in their families’ education, nutrition, home improvement, and general welfare, with ripple effects that extend beyond their immediate families — lifting the living standards and well-being of entire communities.

Social entrepreneurship offers some of the most compelling hope for women’s economic empowerment — as founders and leaders, customers, employees, and value chain contributors.

The Women’s Economic Empowerment (WEE) Accelerator is for social enterprises that are intentional about supporting women in one or more of the following ways:

• Social Enterprise Leaders: The primary participant identifies as female and is a founder, CEO, or other top-level leader with decision-making authority.
• Employees: The business model intentionally creates more jobs for women within the enterprise.
• Value Chain Contributors: The organization creates increasing business opportunities for women along its value chain (e.g., using a village sales agent model that is more amenable to women villagers’ lifestyle or buying products made by women).
• Customers: Predominantly female customers by design. In this case, “customers” refers to those who are positively impacted by the enterprise.

APPLICANT REQUIREMENT

• A senior leader (e.g., CEO, Executive Director, Managing Director)
• Fluent in English
• Has consistent and reliable access to internet connectivity
• Has the bandwidth to participate in the program’s 6-month duration, requiring an average of 4-6 hours/week

ORGANIZATION REQUIREMENT

• Committed to creating positive benefits for people living in poverty, addressing one or more of the UN Sustainable Development Goals
• Committed to scale its solution far beyond current operations
• Has been operational for at least a year and is delivering products/services to customers
• Has at least $20,000 USD but no more than $2M USD in annual earned income and is not entirely dependent on contributions or grants
• Has at least 3 paid, full-time employees (or equivalent)
• Has at least 3-months of cash runway

OFFICIAL LINK