FedEx : Growing Small Businesses and Driving Positive Change

November 13, 2017

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This Global Entrepreneurship Week (November 13-18, 2017), Vital Voices Global Partnership and FedEx, Platinum Sponsor of the VV GROW Fellowship, a leading global accelerator for women business owners, are spotlighting three extraordinary women entrepreneurs who are growing businesses, fighting against inequality and driving positive change in their communities.

Sometimes it's about fighting back:

Lina Khalifeh discovered her passion for martial arts when she was only five years old. This passion evolved into SheFighter, the first self-defense studio for women in Jordan. Lina shared some of her experience with the fellowship, 'I knew I wanted to grow, but didn't know how. The training has helped me in two main areas: 1) understanding and using my financials; 2) expanding my business vision, identifying what I wanted to do next and how to get there.' Lina was driven to take SheFighter to gyms across the world. Through VV GROW, Lina was awarded a grant to create a training of trainers system to make this possible. With her system now being implemented, Lina is expanding SheFighter to a network of gyms and organizations in a growing number of countries and bringing fierce empowerment to women the world over.

Sometimes, it's about understanding what you're worth:

After almost a decade in business running Stratum, and providing financial services to small and medium businesses in the Dominican Republic, Taide Aquino needed support to break through to the next level of business growth. Within the first six months of starting the fellowship, Taide implemented changes in her business and began seeing remarkable results, growing her revenue by 60%. Because of this she increased her staff's compensation by 50%!

Sometimes it's about changing the world:

The World Health Organization estimates that 4 million preventable deaths that occur annually across the globe are due to inhalation of smoke from wood fired cook stoves. VV GROW fellow Habiba Ali was drawn to renewable energies and improved cook stoves because she saw in her own family the harmful health impacts of traditional wood fueled stoves. To address this, she founded Sosai, a leading provider of improved cook stoves and water filters in Nigeria. Through Sosai, Habiba is not only addressing the health and environmental challenges, but she is also creating jobs. As a result of what she learned during the VV GROW Fellowship, Habiba has changed Sosai's sales processes to support the creation of new jobs across the country.