As AWEC approaches our 5 year anniversary and in honor of International Women’s Day 2022, we are thrilled to announce #ShePowersAfrica, a matching gift challenge campaign that will enable AWEC to increase both the depth and breadth of our impact on women entrepreneurs throughout Africa.
In the past four and a half years, AWEC has grown from an audacious idea to the reality of today: a high-impact, human-centered capacity building program designed to accelerate entrepreneurs and their businesses across Africa. To date, we have directly impacted more than 800 women entrepreneurs across Africa and indirectly impacted thousands of their employees and family members with increased economic opportunities.
Powering AWEC Powers Africa
By December 31, 2022, our goal is to raise $667,000 USD to fund the expansion of our services and impact. Upon reaching this goal, a generous donor has pledged to make a matching gift of the same amount.
Together, the $1.33 million raised will capitalize AWEC’s scaling plans to:
- Deepen our commitment to alumnae through a series of initiatives designed to meet the needs of growing women-led businesses, including investor-readiness training and connections to potential sources of funding.
- Scale our impact across Africa by leveraging low-bandwidth technology solutions and/or partnerships to exponentially increase the number of female founders who we can accelerate.
- Improve the pipeline of women entrepreneurs seeking to join our future cohorts and enable other organizations to leverage our unique learning model.
Why are we so committed to changing the future of Africa? Watch this video to learn more:
Making the Impossible Possible
Throughout the past four years, AWEC has done what many had warned us was impossible.
We designed an Africa-specific, tech-enabled, high-touch business management curriculum to create access and opportunity for women-led businesses across 52 African countries.
We have seen measurable growth among our program Fellows across metrics like revenue, number of employees, business knowledge, and quality of peer and mentor networks.
And we have expanded our presence on the continent each year, including recently receiving more than 3,500 applications for our next cohort, which is a 34% increase in submissions and demonstrating the profound need for capacity building programs like ours.
More Than Halfway to Goal
We are thrilled to announce that we have already raised more than 50% of our $667,000 goal, thanks to the generous gifts of individuals, corporations and organizations including:
- Christopher Caine, Mercator XXI, LLC
- General Atlantic
- Douglas Haynes
- Jon Iwata, Data & Trust Alliance
- David Kappos, Cravath, Swaine, and Moore LLP
- Theo Schlossnagle, L42
- Kevin Warsh, Duquesne Family Office
- Jerry Yang, AME Cloud Ventures
On International Women’s Day 2022, please join these philanthropic individuals and hundreds of others in supporting AWEC’s continued impact by making a gift today.
Help us to enable women-led businesses to change the future of the African continent.
