NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Funded by the U.K. Department for International Development and working in Jordan and Egypt, the Arab Women’s Enterprise Fund (AWEF) stimulates increased women’s economic empowerment through a market systems approach. AWEF has been one of DFID’s flagship women’s economic empowerment programmes and the first to innovatively apply a market-systems development approach to enhance women’s participation in markets.

Over the past five years of implementation we have learned a lot about the practicalities of applying a market systems development (MSD) lens to delivering access and agency benefits for disadvantaged women. Through our interventions we have aimed to embed new models and practices that change how market actors engage with and empower women as consumers, producers and workers.

As AWEF comes to an end in April 2020, the purpose of this webinar is to share emerging lessons and results on the unique AWEF approach and to present lessons from our upcoming Practitioner Learning Brief on Making Digital Finance Work for Women in the MENA Region. The webinar will focus on practical learning and aims to encourage others to apply a similar MSD-Women’s Economic Empowerment (MSD-WEE) approach within existing or new programmes in the MENA region and globally.

Time: 9 – 10 am EDT