Read this personal reflection of 2023 from our Chief Changemaker in Ukraine: Maryna Saprykina.
This year has been significant for us. It's the second year of ongoing war in our country, bringing dramatic changes to the economy and business landscape. Many businesses have closed, many relocated. Despite this, people continue to work, especially women, who have taken on the role of managing businesses in place of their husbands, while they are defending our country.
The U&WE Hub project was founded as a response to the war. My primary goal was to help displaced women in Ukraine and abroad to start or expand their businesses in order to have funds for living. Today, 1.5 years later, U&WE has become a friendly and supportive environment for female entrepreneurs who are developing or just planning to start their own businesses in these most challenging times.
From our side within the community, we organize training sessions and provide education on the fundamentals of entrepreneurship, we invite experts and trainers from leading business schools, and we put a lot of effort into working with psychologists and mentors to help women overcome fears, trying to support them in this challenging learning journey.
To expand our activities we established offline U&WE hubs in four communities in Ukraine: Brovary, Hoshcha, Ivano-Frankivsk, and Chernivtsi. We already conducted two training programs and successfully trained more than 2 thousand women. To reach women in rural areas U&WE Hub started conducting one-day entrepreneurship training sessions on the basics of entrepreneurship. To date, more than 120 local communities have expressed their desire to have similar hubs in their cities.
Our goal is to help Ukrainian women entrepreneurs and create a business environment that already plays and will continue to play an extremely important role in the future development of Ukrainian cities and communities.
We strive to unite current and future entrepreneurs in order to build a brilliant future for themselves and our country together.
Today, 'women empowerment' has become our rallying cry, and we see it manifest in practice. My dream is to empower one million Ukrainian women in entrepreneurship. And I strongly believe that it will come true, cause, as our women say, If not now, then when?
