BALI, Indonesia, Feb. 13, 2020 /PRNewswire/ — On February 13, 2020, the Sasakawa Peace Foundation (SPF) in partnership with Frontier Incubators program, an initiative of the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, launched the Gender Lens Incubation and Acceleration (GLIA) Toolkit at the Asian Venture Philanthropy Network (AVPN) Southeast Asia Summit. This practitioner-focused resource aims to assist entrepreneurship support organizations (ESOs, also known as incubators, accelerators, and intermediaries) in Southeast Asia to be more inclusive of all genders.

Globally, women entrepreneurs are under-represented in many lucrative high-growth sectors and are more likely to run smaller scale businesses. Closing the gender gap to enable equal participation of women and men in entrepreneurship could lead to an increase in the global economy of up to 5 trillion USD. However, the world of entrepreneurship and investment is still not equally accessible to or inclusive of all genders. ESOs play a pivotal role in driving gender-equitable change by supporting social impact enterprises and ensuring that capital flows toward businesses that bring value to women.

The GLIA toolkit aims to help ESOs in Southeast Asia curate their own customized gender strategy by providing practical guidelines, case studies, and frameworks outlining strategies for applying a gender lens to their organization, program, and ecosystem. An interactive version of the toolkit is available online (in Burmese, English, Filipino and Khmer) as well as in mobile and PDF formats.

https://toolkits.scalingfrontierinnovation.org/ 

“The GLIA toolkit has been designed by practitioners, for practitioners, in a truly collaborative effort,” said SPF President Shuichi Ohno. “This is the first step in our plans to work with ESOs to support women-led and inclusive businesses in Asia at scale. We hope to continue to do more to build a gender-smart entrepreneurial ecosystem in Asia together.”

This toolkit is the result of a 12-month collaboration between SPF’s Asia Women Impact Fund and Frontier Incubators program, an initiative of the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, and was delivered by a consortia of SPF, ygap, Conveners.org, and SecondMuse. To validate and contextualize the guidelines, frameworks, and recommendations for Southeast Asia, the GLIA toolkit also underwent a rigorous pilot testing phase conducted by six leading ESOs across the region: ONOW Myanmar, Phandeeyar, Instellar, xchange, SHE investments, and agile development group.

Asia Women Impact Fund (AWIF)

In 2017, SPF announced the formation of the Asia Women Impact Fund (AWIF), which aims to invest up to 100 million USD from its endowment to work toward a future where all women in Asia are empowered to reach their full potential. The fund aims to realize this vision by making investments to achieve favorable outcomes for women across Asia and to support women entrepreneurs in Southeast Asia. For additional information, please visit: https://www.spf.org/awif/

Frontier Incubators

Frontier Incubators is a capacity-building program for impact-focused incubators and accelerators in the Asia Pacific region. It is a part of the Scaling Frontier Innovation program, an initiative of the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, which supports social enterprises to scale their development impact in the Asia Pacific region.

Please direct all inquiries to:
Media Relations Division, Sasakawa Peace Foundation
Email: spfpr@spf.or.jp
Phone: +81-03-5157-5398

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