Women’s economic empowerment have been added to a long list of initiatives and priority areas for Crystal Fund since 2019, to promote gender inclusive finance and empower Georgian women and girls through entrepreneurship in order to eliminate gender-based socioeconomic disadvantages and achieve gender equality in Georgian society.
At the present time, Crystal Fund is implementing the large-scale USAID Program Supporting Youth and Women Entrepreneurship in Georgia (YES-Georgia) as an extension of the previous USAID program Youth Entrepreneurial Skills for Advancing Employability and Income Generation in Georgia, implemented by Crystal Fund in 2015-2018 in cooperation with JSC MFO Crystal, PH International and Junior Achievement. In terms of women participation the program’s key outcomes were amazing.
In 2019, USAID announced that YES-Georgia would be revised with additional support from the W-GDP Initiative. The only program in Europe and Eurasia to be selected, the American people are investing $840,000 in additional funding to support women entrepreneurship through YES-Georgia. The program honed its focus toward supporting women and launched new activities designed to meet the needs of women entrepreneurs. Accordingly, a new campaign – All Women Are Champions! – was launched by Crystal Fund, in cooperation with the Financial Inclusion Organization Crystal, aimed at empowering entrepreneurial potential among Georgian women. In partnership with the Georgian Chess Federation, Crystal Blitz Chess Game took place dedicated to the campaign launch. Participants of the event had the opportunity to play blitz chess with World chess legends: Ms. Nona Gaprindashvili and Ms. Maya Chiburdanidze as well as Georgian National Women’s Chess Team and international consultants of the German multinational software corporation SAP SE, who were on a consultancy mission in Georgia to support development of Crystal’s women driven strategy and to contribute to YES-Georgia’s implementation.
YES-Georgia supports economic growth and empowers Georgia’s youth and women by encouraging innovation, promoting entrepreneurship, and enhancing youth and women’s employability. The program’s goal is to increase the number of women entrepreneurs through reaching thousands of women in Georgia and helping in entrepreneurship development and capacity building through innovative forms of access to finance, knowledge and expertise. The YES-Georgia program is implemented with financial support from the American people through USAID and the Women’s Global Development and Prosperity (W-GDP) Initiative. Additional financial support is provided by JSC MFO Crystal. To increase outreach to women in rural areas, the program integrates mobile business services through Buzz-Georgia, in cooperation with the international organization Buzz Women and local consulting company Crystal Consulting LLC. Throughout 2020-2024, YES-Georgia will provide more than 2,500 youth and women with business management trainings, access to legal and accounting services, and mentoring and networking opportunities, that will propel their businesses into a higher revenue-generating enterprise.
For more information please visit the web pages of YES-Georgia program: http://yes-georgia.ge and https://yes.crystal.ge
