End our fiscal year STRONG
Help us end STRONG!
Our fiscal year is coming to a close and I personally want to ask for your help to end this year STRONG. With your support, we can continue to strengthen lives across the African continent and beyond. Our goal is to raise $160,000 by the end of June so we can scale our impact to lift even more women out of poverty than ever before. And, for a second year, we received a Schooner-Welles Challenge Grant, matching up to $80,000 for all gifts through June 30—doubling the amount you give. Please consider a gift today!
Your support is crucial to helping us train one million female entrepreneurs by 2027. Here’s why.
Our organization is at a juncture. We’ve created a successful movement and the impact we and our partners are creating around the world is profound. Eighty-nine percent of our graduates have at least one business two years after they complete SBS, with an average income increase of 211 percent. And while we are thrilled with these results, we know we can do even more.
Over the past couple of years we’ve expanded our program to include 148 Certified SBS Coaches in thirteen African countries. Next year, our goal is to increase this number to 228. We also want to expand into Asia, where countries like India are experiencing a staggering job crisis, and where woman and girls bear the greater brunt of poverty. Once again, SBS can be an answer, helping women start businesses, earn sustainable incomes and lift themselves and their families out of poverty.
The need is there. Your support will enable us to train every organization that comes forward.
Nothing makes me happier than to see our Global Catalyst partners in action, our “coaches” delivering SBS training, adapted to the people they serve in their own communities—and reaching thousands more women than if we went at it alone. Consider this. If we train an additional 80 coaches, they will reach more than 13,200 women. These women support 66,000 kids, all of whom deserve a bright future.
I often think about these kids. The ones who sit home because their families can’t afford the small fees for them to attend school. Most of the time, the first priority for an SBS graduate is to educate her children. She also becomes a confident, strong role model. And these kids notice. On a recent trip to Uganda, I met up with Harriet Nakawesi who had been through our program about five years ago. She had a restaurant. There were five or six pots of food going and the place was packed. Her son, now a high school student, said with pride, “No one works harder than my mother.” What keeps me going is that there are countless other strong women out there, just waiting to transform their lives. And with your help, we can provide them with the opportunity to lift themselves and their families out of poverty, just like we did for Harriet.
One of the things that sets SBS apart from other entrepreneurial training programs is that we walk beside these women as they launch businesses, gain confidence and learn to believe in themselves. Our program doesn’t end with training either. We invest in them with long-term coaching that encourages these women to look within and see their own brilliance, capacity and inner strength. And once they do, they don’t look back. We are able to walk beside them because you walk beside us.
While we walk alongside these strong women, supporting them on their journey, you are there supporting us—making our organization even stronger. YOU are our community, encouraging us forward through your confidence in our mission. And YOU are what keeps us going. Please help us end our fiscal year STRONG by making your gift today. Thank you for your support.
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