Rede Mulher Empreendedora

RME intends to scale its impact and deepen the digitization of its solutions. The Elevate Prize will be applied to create a digital service platform for women entrepreneurs (integrate distance learning, website and improve the entrepreneur's journey in our support services).

In parallel, RME has been working nationally with research and internationally through the company's president at the W20 (group of women from the G20) and, in 5 years, we hope to be working on public policies for female entrepreneurs in Brazil.

Ana Fontes migrated to São Paulo with her family to escape the drought in the northeast and had to work in an early age to help bring money home. Much of her career was developed in the automotive industry, where she stayed for 18 years and in which she faced discrimination for being woman. Tired of this context, Ana decided to open her first business and after making many mistakes, she had to go deeper into the entrepreneurial universe. In 2009, she was selected to participate in Goldman Sachs´10,000 Women program, and inspired by it, she created a blog addressing the fears and doubts of women entrepreneurs, which soon became a success and turned into Rede Mulher Empreendedora, the first and largest support platform for female entrepreneurship in Brazil. Ana, however, felt that it was necessary to have a social initiative and created Rede Mulher Empreendedora Institute, which aims to support women in social vulnerability to gain economic independence and make decisions about their own lives. Nowadays, Ana Fontes is the leader of W20, G20 engagement group focused on gender equity, gender researcher, female entrepreneurship expert and teacher in universities.

Brazil has more than 24 million female entrepreneurs and 40% of Brazilian female entrepreneurs are the main income providers in their household. By supporting a female owned business, we provide: gender equality, family support, community support and the country´s development.

Rede Mulher Empreendedora is the first and largest Brazilian platform for female entrepreneurship. We help women achieve economic independence and make their own decisions regarding their businesses and lives. Our initiatives include: soft and hard skills training, business acceleration, talks, B2B sales program, podcasts, events and a marketplace.

RME already achieved more than 1 million impacted female entrepreneurs, more than 160,000 social vulnerable women, our social medias in internet have more than 500,000 followers on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and Youtube.

Our organization has 11 years of experience in social sector and we have impacted more than 1 million women women entrepreneurs in Brazil. 

Our programs uses a tested 3-pillars methodology that has generated social impact. The 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 and entrepreneurial attitude. In hard skills we consider the competencies related to the business (marketing, sales, financial management, accounting, operation, customer relationship and product or service development). In collaboration, we believe that it is necessary to encourage skills to strengthen the network of contact, integration and collaboration of women entrepreneurs in groups.

RME understands that women have particular issues depending on their culture, race, origin, etc. For this reason our methodology is adapted to all kind of situations by selecting facilitators that have already faced the same challenges in their lives or professional experiences.

For example, in soft skills pillar, RME has a self-image training that was customized to our transgender initiative. We selected transgender facilitators and we worked together to understand what were the specific challenges of these women group related to self-image. We already worked with women under all types of vulnerability. We have already assisted community residents, refugees, countrywomen, young women, quilombolas (afro Brazilian residents of settlements established by escaped slaves), indigenous women, disabled women, women subjected to violence, elderly women, previously incarcerated women, transgenders, among other groups.

To scale initiatives, we built a voluntary network of 500 local ambassadors in Brazil and we are working together government and international institutions like UN Nations, W20 (G20), Google.org, VISA Foundation and others.