NEWS WIRE: USA: Goldman Sachs To Invest $100m in Management Education to Help Women Microfinance Clients Move to Next Level Reports BusinessWeek

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NEW YORK, March 5 – Thousands of women entrepreneurs in developing countries have started their own businesses in the past few years, many with help from local microfinance banks and nonprofits that issued them small loans and financial support. The concept has taken off, but there has been one key flaw in the model: Most of the women have little, if any, formal education and lack the management skills and financial savvy to take their business to the next level. On March 5, investment bank Goldman Sachs announced it would change the equation by pumping USD 100 million into educational projects for these women over the next five years.

In an announcement at Columbia University in New York City, Goldman Chief Executive Lloyd Blankfein said the company is hoping to create a new model of management education designed to help these women learn everything from how to write a business plan to market their own business. The company will be teaming up with a coalition of top business schools, including Wharton, Columbia, Harvard, and Thunderbird School of Global Management is teaming up with the American University of Afghanistan in Kabul to develop a certificate program and a training program for professors.

“This could be the start of something transformational around the world,” says Ruth Simmons, president of Brown University, which will work with the University of Cape Town Business School in South Africa to create a new business training certificate program.

Better Access to Funding and Information

Women in developing countries face three main problems when launching their own businesses: access to finance, business education and access to a network of mentors, says Maha ElShinnawy, a management professor at the American University in Cairo. For example, women own about 18% of the businesses in Egypt, most of which are supported by microfinance loans and have limited growth potential, she says.

ElShinnaway will help to recruit students such as Eman Yousry, 27, a visual artist who started her own furniture and home design store last year out of her home in Cairo. Yousry sells small coasters, pictures frames and other home goods and oversees two employees, but she says she has had trouble getting her business off the ground because of her lack of business education. Yousry, who will attend the management program at the American University in Cairo this summer, hopes to learn how to market her business and expand it, perhaps eventually exporting her items to other countries.

“It is very hard because I have many problems, and I don’t know how to market myself, manage my employees and manage my money,” Yousry says. “These are the main problems I have. I’m hoping this program will help me learn to run my business the right way and help me solve my problems.”

The Mentors of Tomorrow

In addition to business training, the 10,000 Women program organizers hope to create a network of female entrepreneurs and advisers who can serve as role models for aspiring business owners. ElShinnaway says she hopes Yousry will eventually be able to serve as a mentor to women in the program and as an example for case studies the schools will develop on how female entrepreneurs in developing countries overcome societal challenges to become successful business leaders.

Such case studies, they hope, will provide examples that will inspire as well as instruct, ElShinnaway says. “That will be a powerful story that will tell others that like Eman [Yousry], ‘I can take my business to the next level.'”

By Alison Damast, BusinessWeek

NEWS WIRE: USA: Goldman Sachs To Invest $100m in Management Education to Help Women Microfinance Clients Move to Next Level Reports BusinessWeek

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