Hi everyone! I’m Prabha and alongside my co-founders @derek2tu and @aaron_leon we are excited to share what we’ve been working on for the past year.
With Womentum, you can provide financial and community support to women entrepreneurs in developing countries. Our unique pay it forward model means that all funds raised on our platform are a donation and when the women entrepreneurs turn a profit, they then pay it forward to support other entrepreneurs in their communities.
Womentum was inspired when I had the opportunity to travel to Delhi, India and meet with many of these women entrepreneurs in person. It was clear that entrepreneurship is a powerful driver of change in these communities, but the lack of financial and community support was staggering.
How it works: You can browse our site to find the current women entrepreneurs seeking funding, read about their businesses, learn why they need funding, and contribute directly to their initiative. We donate 100% of the funds raised to the women entrepreneurs.
Currently we are supporting women entrepreneurs in India, Uganda, Colombia, and Ecuador with hopes of expanding to more countries in the future.
We’d love to hear any feedback you might have as well as answer any questions you might have.
I love the general concept of this idea a lot because there's huge potential here, but could you clarify how you guarantee donations are being channelled directly to the remote women entrepreneurs, many of whom are likely unbanked? How does that process actually work. I tried looking for that information on your site and was unable to find it. I think it will be critical for your credibility to include that information.
@alirtariq Hi Ali, thanks for your comment. The way we operate is by working with social ventures on the ground. They are also the way that we find these women entrepreneurs to start with. When a women is funded, we transfer the money to our partners on the ground rather than directly to the women entrepreneurs to add a layer of verification. These partners then provide receipts to ensure the money was used as outlined in the proposal. That's a great piece of feedback that we will add in moving forward.
@alirtariq So far, we have been able to leverage our network to find our partners. This has been critical for ensuring the validity of our partners. Moving forward, we are creating an extensive partner vetting process so we can reach out to partners on our own and support women in different countries.
The "pay it forward" movement has grown quite rapidly in the last few years at a personal level. Cheers on leveraging that to help female entrepreneurs!
@aaron_leon, @prabha_dublish, and @derek2tu—what are your favorite stories of these entrepreneurs who were helped by Womentum?
@kunalslab@aaron_leon@prabha_dublish my favorite story is the first entrepreneur we funded, Prossy! Prossy is from Uganda and works with the Engeye organization. She is an artisan and wanted to purchase supplies to weave baskets and textiles to sell in the local markets. Now she is not only selling her goods but also training other women in her village to be artisans as well! She's paying it forward and empowering other women to be entrepreneurs. :)
@hanabcn currently we're focused on financial and leave mentoring to the organizations we partner with. In the future, we definitely want to expand into education / training as well :)
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@derek2tu Great, I would like to be involved and be able to help :)
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