One year after it was established with the objective of equipping female entrepreneurs in Region Four with the knowledge, skills and support to develop sustainable businesses, the Women’s Entrepreneurship Network (WENET) is looking to the wider corporate s community to help keep alive the ideal of strengthening the entrepreneurial base among Guyanese women.
WENET has its origins in an initiative by the internationally-known oil company Exxon-Mobil, which provided the funding for the creation of the project. At the inception, the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) also took an interest in the project.
Kendra Borutski, the Canadian national and Youth Challenge Initiative (YCI) functionary who currently serves as WENET’s project coordinator, told Stabroek Business that over the past year the project has registered modest growth; its membership increasing from 52 to 65. That, according to its own research, makes it the largest networking organisation of its kind in Guyana.
Such was the need for the services which WENET offers that recruitment to the project was simply a matter of finding women involved in entrepreneurial pursuits and inviting them to ‘sign on’. Membership of WENET ranges from women who have owned and operated modest businesses for as many as 15 years to newcomers seeking to turn micro enterprises into profitable entrepreneurial pursuits. The business establishments include daycare centres, snackettes, beauty salons and small farming ventures. Many of them had started their businesses without the benefit of conventional business acumen and had begun to discover, in some cases, that there could be no growth in the absence of at least a functional understanding of how to manage a business enterprise.
WENET’s role is to support the growth of its members’ enterprises to the point where modest entrepreneurial efforts can be transformed into sustainable businesses. This is where the training it provides comes in. The organisation hosts workshops and networking events that provide the women with platforms for interaction; sharing ideas and from learning from each other’s business experiences. Borutski says that the real value of WENET reposes in the role it plays in allowing the women to support each other. The networking, she says, is the core of the entire project. “Women use one another as mentors and strengthen the group through increased participation levels while attracting new members.”
The women meet on the second Wednesday of each month in an environment that allows for an outpouring of creativity. It is from this forum that they garner ideas that are infused into the operational side of their enterprises.
Over the past year, WENET has offered its members workshops which have focused on assisting them to prepare business plans to facilitate loan applications; record-keeping and accounts and marketing. “On the whole the women work together as partners, supporting and promoting each other’s businesses and learning from each other,” Borutski says. The local information technology enterprise, Global Technology, has agreed to offer 60 WENET members training in basic computer skills. The first batch of 20 trainees is due to graduate at the end of this month.
WENET is partnering with the Georgetown Chamber of Commerce and Industry (GCCI) and it is not unlikely that its members may be among the first to benefit from the new GCCI regulations which allow for small businesses to become members of the GCCI.
Now challenged to sustain itself financially after just over a year in existence WENET is reaching out to the local corporate community through an anniversary fundraiser scheduled for Saturday August 18 at the Roraima Duke Lodge Hotel. Borutski says the fundraiser is an initiative designed to reach out to the corporate community, the idea being to have established enterprises support the growth and development of the small business sector.
More than that the fundraiser will also provide the members of WENET with opportunities to showcase their respective enterprises and to demonstrate just how much the direction in which their businesses have gone have been influenced by what WENET has had to offer.
