Support Female Entrepreneurs in Palestine

TYO is excited to announce that our newest program for women entrepreneurs in Palestine is in full swing. The objective of the project is to empower women entrepreneurs and provide them with the tools and skills needed to grow profitable and sustainable businesses that are scalable and facilitate job creation. We are excited to be offering a program that will increase women’s enterprise development skills and provide them with the opportunity to expand their micro-businesses.

Where We Have Been

After interviewing over one hundred highly-qualified entrepreneurs throughout Northern Palestine, TYO selected and invited the top forty-five candidates to join the newest cohort. Following our selection of entrepreneurs, the new program launched in late November 2015 with a month of robust trainings including a psychological and social assessment, an idea sourcing and product development workshop, a bookkeeping training, and a seven-day business planning intensive with an above-average attendance number of 32 participants per training. The psychological and social assessment provided the women with an opportunity for TYO’s in-house psychologist to lead a day-long discussion in the personal, familial and societal forces either limiting or encouraging the women to forward their careers as entrepreneurs.

Following the psychological and social assessment, TYO’s primary technical training partner inaugurated their trainings by providing both an idea sourcing & product development and a bookkeeping workshop. The idea sourcing and product development workshop was a deeply beneficial initial exercise that taught the women how to brainstorm sound business ideas and how to craft and design their products while keeping in theme with their newly formed business ideas. Thereafter, the women received a day-long bookkeeping training which was challenging yet beneficial to both existing and budding business owners. Even the entrepreneurs with existing businesses did not know how to record their expenditures, revenue, and profit and this workshop provided them with that critical skill.

We wrapped up 2015 with a seven-day business planning intensive in which the women were taught how to prepare a sound and structured business plan. The women were given two weeks to apply what they had learned to developing their own business plans.

Where We Are Going

Now that the women have been trained on the basics of business plan development and submitted their business plans, they will enter more intensive group and individual coaching phases. 2016 will be ripe with more intensive trainings as well as a Networking event, business-English intensives, and regional apprenticeship opportunities! The women have just gotten their feet wet and are ready for so much more. These entrepreneurs have demonstrated tremendous commitment to their development and advancement as small business owners and we are continuously honored to walk alongside them on this journey.  

Thank you for your supporting women-led businesses in Palestine!