30 women and girls will launch new business ideas within the third edition of Pre-accelerator Programme for women and girls

Within the programme, which is launched for the third time, the participants will follow their entrepreneurship ambitions, as well as learn from experts, from different fields, how to launch and run their own businesses. Within 6 weeks of discussions and workshops, women and girls will share their experiences, coming up with new business ideas, which will become new business patterns, being subsequently presented to the investors. This will help the participants create long-lasting networks and collaborations, contributing to the development of start-up ecosystem, as well as close the existing entrepreneurship gender gap in the Republic of Moldova.

„As UN agency, our primary goal is to support the Government to advance gender equality and women’s economic empowerment. No empowerment and no gender equality can be achieved if women are not economically independent. This programme started in the pandemic crisis, which has disproportionately affected women. So the programme is a very timely and important one. It is also important in terms of motivating women and girls to break the stereotype that women are not good at running a business”, mentioned Dominika Stojanoska, UN Women Moldova Country Representative.

Oxana Paierele, Programme Coordinator at the Embassy of Sweden in Chisinau said: „It is much more risky to run your own business rather than having a stable job, with a standard programme. But launching a business offers you a dose of freedom in manifesting creativity but also gaining financial independence. Within this preaccelerating programme, we would like to inspire women, as well as to facilitate the transformation of certain ideas to launched businesses. I am sure that the beneficiaries of the programme will receive necessary expertise but also space for testing their ideas”.

„The XY team is happy to support a new torrent of women and girls participating in the third edition of the Pre-accelerator programme. Also, we are happy that the number of applicants increased by 32% in comparison with the previous edition. This means that our programme gets more popular. However, the greatest joy is that, out of 55 participants in previous programmes, 32 have registered LLCs, being active to this date.” Traian Chivriga, partner at XY Partners, declared.

Out of a total number of 180 applicants, 30 women and girls between the ages of 18 and 51+ have been selected for this edition. 50% of them belong to socially vulnerable groups. The results of previous editions show that 58% manage to launch and actively run their own businesses. Moreover, they manage to adapt to the pandemic situation, coming up with ideas related to digitalisation of businesses run by them. The first two editions offered prize and support to women entrepreneurs from different fields. Furthermore, as a result of the training sessions offered, during March 1th – April 15th 2021, 5 businesses, from the fields of arts, food, fashion, received additional funds. Within the third edition of the programme, women entrepreneurs from the fields of information and communications technology, marketing, tourism, medicine, accountancy, design and engineering, will participate in a competition for the economic empowerment necessary for developing a business.

In this context, UN Women Moldova supports a healthy competition among the participants in the programme who will inspire other women and girls to launch businesses and create new workplaces in the Republic of Moldova. This is also supported by the Embassy of Sweden, which supported financially the development of the programme.

*The pre-accelerator: Women Entrepreneurship programme is designed for girls and women from the age of 16 years, being the first free programme of this kind in the Republic of Moldova.