AH - Audio for Her

Women in Brazil face unemployment (got worse in the pandemic) and digital exclusion (due to lack of skills and price of the services). Entrepreneurship is a path to generate income to women in vulnerable communities. To reach them it is necessary to use the digital devices and tools they have access to. Our solution aims to help women develop their own business through remote audio-lessons, using free mobile apps more used by the poor population in the country such as Whatsapp, Youtube and others. With digital, technical and entrepreneurship skills women will be able to open or improve their business and become financially independent.

In 2021, brazilian unemployment rate reached 14.7% (14.8 million people) according to Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics. The rate among women was bigger ( 17.9%) than among men (12.2%). 

Women could learn how to develop their own business as a new income source.Considering the social restriction measures from the pandemics, the learning should happen remotely, using the internet. But ¼ of the Brazil's population do not have internet access. For those with internet access, 58% only have access through mobile devices, especially in rural areas (79%) and the low income groups (85%).

The digital exclusion in the country happens because of lack of knowledge of how to use (41,6%) and expensive services and equipment (17%). Related to this last problem, the Brazilian cellular operators charge each SMS sended. For that reason, 73% of the population already use the Internet for social media and basic communication, and 98% of smartphones had WhatsApp installed, which is a free app. Whatsapp also serves as a sales channel for small and medium-sized enterprises: 25% of businesses use WhatsApp Business. 

So it is necessary to teach entrepreneurship and digital literacy skills to vulnerable women through audio-aulas in free apps.

An Audio-lesson training program for women entrepreneurs at an early stage or women with business ideas. For remote education, the use of methodologies adapted for free mobile apps will have a better chance of success due to the low cost of cellphones and wide use of the app in Brazil. 

The training will include video and audio-class in our 3-pillars methodology that has generated social impact, plus the digital literacy content. The 3-pillars are: socio-emotional skills (soft skills), technical skills (hard skills) and collaborative networking. In soft skills, we consider encouraging self-knowledge and increasing personal skills of female leadership. In hard skills we consider the competencies related to the business (as marketing, sales, financial management). In collaboration, we believe that it is necessary to encourage skills to strengthen the network of contacts.

Considering the Brazilian Internet coverage problem, the solution will also invest in capacity building, providing SIM cards to participants where only mobile internet is available.

Brazil is one of the countries with the highest number of women entrepreneurs in the world: 24 million women. These women face several difficulties in the management of their businesses.Our research shows that 80% of women entrepreneurs start their business without planning knowledge, and face challenges in other areas such as marketing (46%) and financial management (37%). 

Moreover, the COVID-19 pandemic led 67% of business women to stop their activities. Business digitalization was the main measure taken by women entrepreneurs to deal with the situation (70%), however only 34% of them said they felt confident about the use of digital technologies.

The target audience of the project is women over 16 years-old that are leading small businesses in the early or idea stage, and are part of vulnerable groups/outskirts as rural women, black women, indigenous women, and single unemployed mothers. 

To keep the solution close to women's needs, RME methodologies are based on the learning of our already realized initiatives that impacted more than 1 million of women in 11 years. To complement our practices, RME carries out annually the biggest national female entrepreneurship research of Brazil. In the day-by-day, the projects are led by our 90%-women team, keeping the gender lens from the base to the top.

By supporting a female entrepreneur, helping to create or improve her business, we provide an own source of income to the individual and her family, and in scale with impacts in gender equality, community support and the country's development.

In Brazil, the women suffered more from the negative economic impact of the pandemic. To build an inclusive digital economy it is important to provide them the digital skills they need. The inclusion must consider brazilian specific characteristics, where 96.3% of the population has a mobile phone, only 75% access to the internet, and there is a massive use of free apps in the day-by-day. Helping women with digital literacy plus entrepreneurship training through audio-lessons, will unify impact both in digital and economic inclusion.

RME has a strong experience in remote assistance to women entrepreneurs, such as Webseries, e-learning, toolkits and other online contents. Our remote mentorship impacted more than 25,000 entrepreneurs, and the RME Forum,our biggest annual event, reached more than 40,000 people online. 

Specifically, the e-learning model with audio-lessons to vulnerable women was tested in a pilot project. The project, started in 2021, involved the brazilian representation of UNOPS (United Nations Office for Project Services) and MPT (Public Ministry of Labor). The pilot target audience was women living in the region of Amazon Forest that suffered a boat accident with implications in their health, education and professional lives. The women are receiving training to open a business by audio and video-classes using their mobiles. The pilot has not finished yet, but we already notice results and plan to expand.

The solution was made considering the problems and needs of low income people living in remote places, as the Amazon communities. Female entrepreneurs in rural villages, women from the outskirts, indigenous in the forest, people who never before could attend e-learning iniciativas that require a computer device, high speed internet or advanced digital skills will be able to learn how to open their own business. 

The training model and its record content also could be replicated in the future in other regions and countries that also have a massive use of mobile devices but a lack of digital skills.

RME has already impacted 1 million women throughout Brazil, with in-person and remote classes. In the pilot program of this initiative, only 40 women from the Amazon region participated. Although, in Brazil there are 24 million female entrepreneurs, amongst them, 14 million in the idea or informal stage. This solution has the potential to reach the public of vulnerability within these women.

Before the training starts, our evaluation and monitoring team carries out a qualitative and quantitative analysis on the state of the business and the personal development of the entrepreneurs. Throughout the program cases are collected, and 6 months after its end, a new evaluation measures the evolution after participating. The pilot from this solution is in its final phases, still collecting datas. The progress indicators for this pilot are divided into four groups: activities, outputs, goals and outcomes. The indicators being measure are: Number of women trained, Attendance rate of training participants; Dropout rate of training participants; Satisfaction rate; Increased relationship network; Socio-emotional Skills Index;

Technical Skills Index; Business Opening Fee;Business Formalization Fee; Billing Increase Rate; and finally Increase in Economic Autonomy.