Program Description: Women Entrepreneurship Leadership Learning Camp (WELL Camp) program is designed for Dilijan 20-30-year-old young people from Dilijan consolidated community (Dilijan, Teghut, Haghartsin, Gosh, Khachardzan, Aghavnavank, Hovk) for women and girls. The program emphasizes women’s entrepreneurial and leadership skills development, after which participants will have the chance to implement their business enterprises in communities and outside the community, as well as their quality of life, will be improved.
Purpose: To strengthen the entrepreneurial skills of young women in Dilijan consolidated community, which will enable them to implement their business initiatives in the communities and will contribute to the improvement of the quality of life.
Activity 1. Initiation: beneficiary mapping and stakeholder engagement
Based on the applications, YCCD will invite the pre-selected applicants for a short online interview to confirm the motivation of the participants and identify the women who will benefit the most from the participation. It is expected that the selected participants should have a small business initiative or formulated business idea with a strong intention to launch it. Each participant can apply with an individual idea or team-up around one business idea. It is planned to have 20 participants aged 20-30 years old from wider Dilijan community (t. Dilijan, villages: Teghut, Haghartsin, Gosh, Khachardzan, Aghavnavank, Hovk).
Activity 2. “Young women – entrepreneur”: method and module design
The module will be built on three components: four-month online training, two-month mentorship and one-week camp. It will focus on women empowerment: giving young women the foundational learning and skills to launch and manage a business initiative, build network and find partners, promote their business on social media, work with community actors for addressing various business related challenges, and more. The module will be designed to deliver the most relevant content in a highly impactful and experiential way so that young women founders are equipped to overcome the challenges of launching or growing their businesses.
Activity 3. WELL Camp: online training, mentorship and camp
- The four-month of bi-weekly online training will be the fundamental learning stage. The experienced business trainers will lead the comprehensive course on women empowerment and entrepreneurship. The training will start from introducing the essentials of idea formulation, building business model, business management, resource allocation, networking, team work, financial management, marketing and sales. It is planned to have 18 practical courses for 2 hours each and 12 online meet-ups with speakers from various fields including successful entrepreneurs, LG representatives, community activists, etc. – to have inspiring and motivation talks and discussions. During this step by step learning process women gradually will shape their business model. The online trainings will be conducted in the evenings allowing young women to connect at a convenient time for them. Some of these trainings will be recorded and made available as resources supporting the module.
- Two-month-long mentorship program will be launched following the online training. Each of the participants will be matched with a business consultant who will guide the participants to rework on strengths and weaknesses of business concepts.
- A week-long camp in the forests of Dilijan will be an intense and focused work on the business models. The participants will travel and live in a camp area where they will work with experienced business trainers and build their business plan. It is planned to invite experienced business people, community representatives and guests speakers for fire-side talks to share their experiences, share their stories and motivate young women to stay persistent in their initiatives.
Activity 4. The pitching and launching ideas
As final stage of the program, a pitching event will be organized. YCCD given its large network of partners will invite various stakeholders and representatives from businesses, CSOs, start-up incubators, local community activities and others to hear the pitching of business ideas of young women, look at the business models, prototypes and support most viable ideas by setting up long term partnerships. As a result of pitching the invited jury formed from business trainers and community representatives will select two best ideas that will receive small prize to be invested in purchase of necessary supplies to launch their business model.
This program was funded through a Department of State Public Diplomacy Section grant, and the opinions, findings and conclusions, or recommendations expressed herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect those of the Department of State.