Accenture awards Cherie Blair Foundation for Women $1.7m for Rwanda's business owners

Accenture and the Accenture Foundations have awarded the Cherie Blair Foundation for Women $1.7m to train female business owners in Rwanda.

The cash injection is part of the supplier’s Skills to Succeed initiative, which aims to provide 500,000 people globally with the skills needed to get a job or build a business by 2015.  

The Cherie Blair Foundation has a similar initiative, in partnership with Accenture and Care International, called Skilling for Change. The two-year grant will enable the foundation to achieve its initiative’s goal of reaching 15,000 female entrepreneurs in Rwanda through classroom and online mentoring and skills-building courses.  

The grant will focus on providing skills in business plan development, financial literacy, investor readiness and social media for business growth. In addition, the grant will aid the development of mobile technologies designed for mobile banking services.

Jill Huntley, managing director of Global Corporate Citizenship at Accenture, said: “Through skills training and mentoring, these women will gain the opportunities they need to establish and grow businesses that bring them, their families and their local communities financial independence.

“By partnering with the Cherie Blair Foundation for Women, we can use technology to build a programme that is both sustainable and scalable and that ultimately builds the confidence and capabilities of women entrepreneurs.”

The grant will also enable Accenture to provide pro bono consulting services. These will include developing training curricula for webinars/teaching videos and planning the programme’s future expansion into other geographies.

Sevi Simavi, chief executive of the Cherie Blair Foundation for Women, said: “Through our partnership with Accenture, we will enable women across Rwanda to realise their economic ambitions.

“Helping to increase the access to skills training, technology and capital will contribute to the greater, ongoing financial success of Rwanda’s women entrepreneurs, and help to inform the expansion of skills training to women in need around the world.”