From 62 Women to More Than 620

AWE Global completed its ASSET Entrepreneurship Program with 62 women farmers and entrepreneurs in northern Malawi earlier this summer. Over seven intensive days, participants explored topics ranging from market research and innovation to costing, financial literacy, sales, marketing, leadership, and women's economic empowerment.

The seven-day training is only the first stage of the program.

This year, we're piloting a new model expected to significantly extend the reach of our work while developing participants as trainers and community leaders.

Over the next ten months, each of the 62 graduates will lead the same group of ten women through the ten core modules of the ASSET program. Before each monthly workshop, participants will join an online refresher session with AWE Global and our partner, Emerge Livelihoods, reviewing that month's topic before returning to their communities to deliver the workshop themselves. By the end of the program, each group of ten women will have completed the same core curriculum covered during the original seven-day intensive.

The knowledge shared with 62 women this month will reach more than 620 women over the coming year.

This pilot will test whether a high-quality entrepreneurship program can be multiplied through local women, allowing more communities to benefit while developing participants themselves as trainers and leaders. This model has the potential to help us reach substantially more women with a quality learning experience, the knowledge needed to move forward with their enterprises, and exposure to strong role models, as well. 

Throughout the week, participants practised facilitation as they learned aboutr entrepreneurship, gradually becoming more comfortable leading discussions, presenting ideas, and teaching others. One exercise asked participants to identify the roles that best described them. On the first day of training, more than 80% identified themselves primarily as learners. By the final day, more than 70% identified themselves as trainers.

One participant described that transformation this way:

"I came here thinking that I would not understand what was going to be taught. But you have been patient with us and simplified things so that even me, who hasn't been in a classroom in a long time, can learn and have the confidence to teach others."

By the end of the week, the shift in mindset was evident across the room. As participant Olive Mlotha put it:

"We are ready to deliver the program."

Over the next ten months, we'll be following this pilot closely - not only to see how the graduates apply what they've learned in their own businesses, but also to understand how effectively this approach can bring practical entrepreneurship training to many more women through local leadership.

We're grateful to the Gay Lea Foundation for supporting this initiative through its Community Impact Grant and to our partner, Emerge Livelihoods, whose leadership has made this pilot possible. We look forward to sharing what we learn.