5th Regional Steering Committee Meeting and Consultation Workshop of the project “Promoting Women Empowerment for Inclusive and Sustainable Industrial Development in the MENA Region”

3 and 4 May 2018, Barcelona. Since February 2015, UNIDO is implementing a UfM labelled flagship project in the MENA region with the objective to enhance women’s economic inclusion and thus to create the conditions for a sustainable and inclusive growth by harnessing the great potential of women entrepreneurs in the MENA region. The project “Promoting Women Empowerment (PWE) for Inclusive and Sustainable Industrial Development in the MENA Region” (phase I), is funded by the Italian Government.

The project approach is holistic and encompasses three levels of intervention:

1) Nurturing, facilitating and accompanying the policy dialogue between key stakeholders with the objective to produce a set of recommendations and actions points endorsed by all parties to promote women entrepreneurship in the region,

2) Strengthening the capacities of national business women’s associations in providing better quality and demand-driven services to women entrepreneurs to create and grow their businesses and

3) Promoting promising women-led investments in the target countries through training, coaching, identification and facilitation of business partnerships opportunities and access to finance.

The project’s that was initially set to end in July 2016 was extended until May 2018, in order to strengthen and scale up the activities and integrate Algeria in the project’s country coverage.

Objectives:

•  To draw conclusions and present the lessons learned from Phase I and formulate recommendations for scaling up.
• The objective of the Consultation workshop is to present the project’s second phase, discuss and consolidate additional recommendations from national partners.