International trade is an invaluable tool to empower women and one of our partners SheTrades does just that.
Aiming to connect 3 million women-owned businesses, companies and partner institutions to market by 2021, SheTrades offers is an organization offering resources through their online platform. The resources revolve around five key pillars. The first pillar focuses on building connections and strong networks to increase business deals, credibility and create new opportunities. The second helps women source and offer products and services of their own, through the tenders portal, which helps women do business by posting sourcing opportunities for women-owned businesses, promoting inclusion within regional and global supply chains.
The third ‘learning’ pillar had a particular impact on SheTrades member Chiedza Makonnen, the CEO/Designer of a clothing label called Afrodesiac in Ghana. Before she began working with SheTrades, her business was running at an informal level. After signing up, it grew an incredible 300%. “Before SheTrades, I kind of felt as a business owner, as we grew, I needed access to more and more answers, and I didn’t have any place to go and SheTrades gave me a place to go,” she shares.
“SheTrades opened our marketplace; we did not have wholesale clients before. We had one revenue stream,” says Makonnen. “SheTrades invited us to the Coterie trade show in New York. They helped us with mentors, with access to information, webinars and prepared us to be in front of international buyers.”
#4e4b48The fourth aspect of SheTrades focuses on participation and is the area that we at Global Women Fresh offer a lot of support under. As a partner of SheTrades, we recently attended fruit and vegetable fair Fruit Attraction in Madrid, where we worked with women from Africa who are avocado growers. We gave them one-on-one business coaching sessions centered on how to create and deliver an impactful elevator pitch for their business.
The last pillar of the SheTrades strategy is offering a supportive online community, encouraging discussion on their forums, sharing important news and upcoming events and motivating members with success stories. As a partner of SheTrades, we’re currently conducting discussion-based research to better understand the women that we serve and we need your help. We’d like to know the areas that women in agriculture really want to connect and discuss over. If you’d like to be part of the survey, sign up to our mailing list to be notified when we release the survey.
