CFP - Women’s Economic Empowerment – Increasing Entrepreneurship Skills for Women UN Joint Programme for Kigoma region 2017-2021

Background/Context:

UN Women (UNW), grounded in the vision of equality enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations, works for the elimination of discrimination against women and girls; the empowerment of women; and the achievement of equality between women and men as partners and beneficiaries of development, human rights, humanitarian action and peace and security. Placing women’s rights at the center of all its efforts, the UN Women leads and coordinates United Nations system efforts to ensure that commitments on gender equality are translated into action throughout the world. It provides strong and coherent leadership in support of Member States’ priorities and efforts while building effective partnerships with civil society and other relevant actors.

Under its mandate to support Member States to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) gender-related targets in general and in particular SDG 5 with a focus on addressing gender-based inequalities to increase economic opportunities and access to productive resources for women of all ages; UN Women Tanzania is pleased to announce a Call for Proposals for Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) and Non-Government Organizations (NGOs) with innovative and high impact programmes on the advancement of gender equality, and the promotion of women’s economic rights with a focus on addressing the skills and information barriers that can contribute to women’s economic empowerment in Kasulu, Kibondo and Kakonko districts of Kigoma Region.

While women make up more than 50% of those owning or operating informal, micro, small, and medium enterprises in Tanzania, women are disproportionately represented in the informal and micro levels. This disproportionate representation in the lower levels of the economic activity is due to the combined effects of women’s skill gaps in entrepreneurship, financial management, business formalization, access to finance, value addition, and trade; women’s abilities to form profitable partnerships along the value chain; and women’s abilities to engage with the regulatory environment such as business formalization processes at the local level.  The programme will target both women small holder farmers and women entrepreneurs operating at informal and micro level businesses, and will address the skills and knowledge gaps, specifically entrepreneurial and business development skills, that the women need grow their informal and micro businesses and to increase their incomes.

Programme Focus

Through this call for proposals UN Women invites applications from NGOs and CSOs with a strong track record in gender equality and the empowerment of women. Such organisations will have a proven capacity to develop and implement a programme to build the skills and knowledge of informal and micro level women entrepreneurs to enable them to formalize their business and to increase their incomes from their economic activities. The programme also aims to increase women’s capacity at the local level to engage with local government authorities on business regulations and requirements as well as in local government planning processes related to their economic activities.

The overall objectives of the programme are 1) Targeted enterprises (individual and cooperatives) are enabled to expand, add value to their products and move up the value chain across the country with a focus on women; 2) key institutions, including business regulatory bodies, trade and investment institutions and BDS targeting gender sensitive enterprises, enabled to improve performance with increased outreach, simplified regulations and efficient administration.

Proposed intervention(s)

The envisages three (3) key components to be implemented by either one or more organizations or in partnership in which case they will have to show proof of the partnership at the time of submitting the proposals and clear indication of responsibilities/lead role. The indicated budget estimates are for a 1-year period and interested CSOs/NGOs are expected to submitted covering this period.

With an overall outcome of Women, especially the poorest and most excluded, are economically empowered and benefit from development, proposals should address all or any of the following components:

• Component 1 Strengthen capacity of women entrepreneurs on entrepreneurship, financial management, business formalization, access to finance, value addition and trade opportunities;
• Component 2: build capacities of women entrepreneurs to be able to build productive partnerships along the value chain;
• Component 3: build capacities of women entrepreneurs to understand local government processes and to engage in policy and community dialogue at the local level on business regulations and requirements and issues related to women’s economic empowerment.

  The Call for Proposals encourages innovative approaches and partnerships to address the needs of women entrepreneurs operating at the informal and micro levels with low levels of literacy in the targeted communities. The Call for proposals encourages partners that address the needs of the women entrepreneurs in the targeted communities including all aspects of business orientation, market access/market information and general aspects of enterprise development. In addition, women will be trained on group formation and strengthening with a result on peer-to-peer learning and networking. The Call for proposals also encourages awareness creation and education on local governance processes for women to enable them to identify entry points for participation and influencing local planning processes that govern the business environment, such as business registration requirements, taxation exemptions etc., ensuring that women entrepreneurs are able to identify the entry points to request clarification, negotiate with and hold accountable the duty bearers/ institutions that affect their businesses.

The Call for Proposals encourages NGOs that have proven capacity to develop and implement a programme using new and existing skills development packages and models to build women entrepreneurs capacity. The submitted projects should contribute to women’s economic empowerment and should ensure that all skills building is done in a gender responsive manner taking into consideration the multiple time-burdens of women and the specific structural barriers faced by women.