SOME 20 female entrepreneurs will benefit from business training through a $4million training project over the next few months. The project has been made possible through collaboration between Courts Guyana Inc and Cerulean Inc.

This training, known as the Women’s Empowerment Project (WEP) workshop, is a pilot programme that will be used as a learning experience for the other programmes.

“We want to give back. Our vision is to give back to the grassroots, because that’s where there is the biggest impact,” Managing-Director for Courts (Guyana) Limited, Clyde DeHaas, noted at the launch of the WEP.

Furthermore, he indicated his belief that assisting women entrepreneurs would create a bigger impact, since women are the “backbone of small businesses.” He also noted that it will help female entrepreneurs rise above the adversity they inadvertently face.

Managing-Director of Cerulean Inc., Lyndell Danzie-Black, explained that the actual training segment of the programme would last about three months. Here, the women will receive training in various areas of business, including financial management and market research.

“We have basically responded to a lot of the issues entrepreneurs are saying that they have currently,” she said.

The participants applied to online advertisements put out and Black indicated that the set chosen were the ones deemed successful.

“The entrepreneurs cannot do the programme during the day, because they have to look after their businesses, so what we have are evening programmes from 5:30 to 7:30, where they are going to be given various courses,” she explained.

Beyond the training, it is envisioned that other members of the private sector would have the women work with them as interns. Subsequent to that, these women will receive further coaching from the facilitators in ironing out specific issues in their businesses.