Project Title: Powering Prosperity and Economic Freedom For Women and Youth In Cameroon
WHY JOIN THE PROJECT ?
The Powering Prosperity and Economic Freedom for Women and Youth Project has a strong focus on empowering Women and Youth in the private sector to confidently start, grow and expand small and medium-sized enterprises. The Small Business and Entrepreneurship Centre Provide Small Businesses from the informal sector, and SMEs with necessary tools, counseling, seeds capital fund, and contracting expertise.
We will work together to:
- Improve your access to market opportunities and assist you in legalization
- Enable you to have access to finance and link to microfinance institutions
- Help to understand the taxation system and choose the appropriate tax regime.
- Train and accompany to develop Winning Business Plans
- Provide Organizational and Administrative Support to SMEs
- Equip you, impact and assist you in your entrepreneurial venture.
- Facilitate collaboration with various stakeholders.
- Assists SMEs to transition into the formal economy
- Provide Seed Capital and Business Acceleration for Bankable SMEs (Small seed capital grant of $2,500 USD)
Training / Boot Camp
Partners
Upcoming Training / Bootcamps
Cameroon faces widespread disparities in freedom of economic access, especially for women and youth. Small and Medium seize Enterprises are the key to addressing economic parity and GDP growth while making measurable progress towards improving freedom and meeting the SDGs.
Our project is holistic by design, built to address the root causes of SME underperformance and job access in Cameroon, through the fulcrum of a Small Business and Entrepreneurship Center (SBEC). Our strategic plan includes building individual capacity while working for overall systems change, improving the climate for SMEs and opportunities for women and young people to enter the workforce.
The main objective of the project is to support the Small Business and Entrepreneurship Centre (SBEC), which aims to create a more robust and diverse middle class in Cameroon through fostering free enterprise. It seeks to advocate with coalition stakeholders to promote economic freedom while deepening SBEC as a go-to resource for entrepreneurial training and development.
The specific objectives are as follows:
- Create favorable conditions for starting and maintaining businesses
- Build capacity for SMEs to prosper and grow.
- Improve capacity to procure jobs within the cultural context, especially for women and young people.
- Work with our coalition of Banks, Universities, think tanks, NGOs and political actors to advocate for solid policy change and financial institution change to create a favorable environment for SMEs to formalize.
- Improve resources for SMEs and workers through direct training and capacity building programs implemented in 4 regions (supply-side and demand-side).
- Improve our sustainability through new income streams, including SME membership fees and new programs/conferences.
- Building stakeholder alliances to shape the dialogue and advocate for freer economic conditions for SMEs;
- Improving the demand side, by providing the tools and operating conditions necessary to expand the SME economy, towards an end of creating new jobs;
- Empowering women and young people to participate in the entrepreneurial community and to establish and grow SMEs. We especially focus on helping the most vulnerable, including IDPs and other marginalized communities.
Marginalized persons | Women of working age; youths (between 16 and 35) especially young women; Anglophones; individuals with disabilities; individuals without formal education |
Vulnerable persons | Internally displaced persons (IDPs); conflict regions |
Target Regions | a. Northwest and Southwest (ongoing conflict with estimated 700,000 IDPs) b. Littoral, West and Center regions (these regions have received the most IDPs outside the Northwest and Southwest |
KEY PROJECT ACTIVITIES
- An advocacy campaign with stakeholder coalition to change policy
Advocate for solid policy change and financial institution change to create a favorable environment for SMEs to formalize.
- Scale capacity-building and support programs for small business owners
- Six (6)-month business management training program
- Providing Organizational & Administrative Support to SMEs
- Providing Seed Capital and Business Acceleration – For Bankable SMEs (Small seed capital grant of $2,500 USD)
- Job-preparedness Boot Camps
One (1)-week intensive training sessions, quarterly in 5 regions, that combine technical training workshops, job applications and interview strategies, experiential work-based learning opportunities and skills to improve the overall work performance. Our training, designed from a participatory process, focuses on basic life skills, technical skills development, income generation skills and soft skills development.
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