Overview
The Women and Girls Empowered (WAGE) program's third strategic initiative, Business and Social Support for Female Entrepreneurs in Timor-Leste (BEST), was a multi-disciplinary program aimed at addressing the intertwined social, economic, and regulatory challenges faced by women microentrepreneurs in starting, maintaining, and expanding businesses. Launched in 2020 to 2023, this two-year program worked to build the capacity of local microfinance institutions (MFIs) and women’s empowerment-focused civil society organizations (WE CSOs) through technical assistance and small grants to facilitate the development, piloting, and evaluation of formal linkages that ultimately enable vulnerable women to succeed as entrepreneurs as well as provide women entrepreneurs with increased access to financial, entrepreneurial, and social support. The BEST initiative was led by the American Bar Association Rule of Law Initiative (ABA ROLI) and the Grameen Foundation.
WAGE believes that if the capacity of leading CSOs, specifically MFIs and WE CSOs, in Timor-Leste is improved to enable women clients’ access to not only microfinance, but also business training and gender-based violence (GBV) support services, then more vulnerable women will become successful entrepreneurs. The BEST initiative aims to provide women microentrepreneurs in Timor-Leste with access to a more holistic package of financial and social support, leading to enterprise growth and resilience.
The program's three goals included:
- Strengthen the organizational and technical capacities of leading MFIs in Timor-Leste to provide gender-responsive services to female entrepreneurs;
- Strengthen the organizational and technical capacities of leading WE CSOs in Timor-Leste to provide quality business and livelihoods trainings, gender-based violence (GBV) services, and linkages to microfinance services to benefit vulnerable women entrepreneurs; and
- Formalize mutually beneficial linkages between MFIs and WE CSOs in Timor-Leste to expand women entrepreneurs’ access to financial, business, and GBV services.