Under the initiative of International Trade Centre (ITC), for women entrepreneurs of Bangladesh, ‘Commonwealth-SheTrades’ project has been launched at the Pan Pacific Sonargaon on Thursday (Jul 19). ITC will coordinate and implement this two-year long project. For empowering ICT women entrepreneurs, Bangladesh Association of Software and Information Services (BASIS) will work along with ITC.
In this regard, ITC organized a press conference. Nicholas Schlaepfer, Senior Programme Officer at ITC’s Women and Trade Programme, Farhana A Rahman, Senior Vice-President, BASIS, and Shoeb Ahmed Masud, Vice-Presdient (Admin) were present at the conference.
A dedicated project of ITC’s global SheTrades initiative, the SheTrades in the Commonwealth Bangladesh project aims to drive increased trade, productivity and competitiveness for women entrepreneurs and women-owned companies to ensure that they play an active role in international trade. Through training and mentoring activities, the goal is to strengthen the capacities of 3,000 women-owned businesses with a view to generate sales worth £28 million ($38m) by 2020.
Officially launched in April and funded by United Kingdom’s Department for International Development (DFID), SheTrades in the Commonwealth was endorsed by UK Prime Minister Theresa May during the opening of the Commonwealth Business Forum (CBF) in London.
SheTrades in the Commonwealth – Bangladesh will address challenges faced by women entrepreneurs, including access to and control over land, cumber some business and financial institutional processes amongst other entrepreneurial challenges.
‘‘Women entrepreneurs in Bangladesh will receive tailored support through SheTrades in the Commonwealth enabling them to propel their existing market representation and secure greater access to global trade,’’ said Nicholas Schlaepfer, Senior Programme Officer at ITC’s Women and Trade Programme.
Farhana A Rahman said, BASIS has been working with ITC for a long time. BASIS feels privileged and happy to work with ITC in a big project like SheTrades. In Bangladesh ICT sector women’s participation is increasing day by day. Under the initiative of SheTrades, BASIS will work on empowering women of Bangladesh.
The SheTrades in the Commonwealth project will provide governments with better tools and information to implement gender-responsive policies and share best practices.
Over a two-year period, ITC will initially work to increase the competitiveness of women entrepreneurs in the agriculture, apparel and services sectors in four Commonwealth focus countries: Bangladesh, Ghana, Kenya and Nigeria.
For more information, please visit: SheTrades.com/commonwealth
- Press release
