SAP Social Sabbatical: Supporting women entrepreneurs in Georgia with Crystal Fund
The SAP Social Sabbatical in Tbilisi, Georgia, that started 4 weeks ago has just come to an end. Twelve members of the SAP Social Sabbatical team have been working very closely with four local non-profit organizations and/or Social Enterprises. In these four projects SAP colleagues collaborated very closely with their host organizations achieved many positive results. In this blog I would like to describe what the 3-person team that I was part of did while working with Crystal Fund.
Crystal Fund is a subsidiary of Crystal, one of Georgia’s largest micro-financing organizations and it aims “to tackle poverty mainly by dealing with post-Soviet legacy, to strengthen the rule of law in order to ensure justice for all citizens and protection of human rights as well as to contribute towards peace in Georgia and the wider region”. Crystal Fund has received numerous recognitions for its Environmental and Social achievements, e.g. Crystal’s Head of E&S — Maya Kobalia — at the UN Global Compact’s Global SDG Pioneer Contest, Crystal gets “A-“ in Microfinanza Social Rating, Crystal — Winner of the Nation’s CSR Award, and Crystal received Grand-Prix as Georgia’s most responsible Company of the Year.
Not long ago, Crystal Fund received funding from USAID, a US governmental organization that provides foreign aid, to advance women economic development in Georgia: In order for women to be economically successful as entrepreneurs they need to have certain skills and also possess sufficient knowledge in some key areas, e.g. in Financial Management. They also may need support and business advice from business experts, i.e. many of them could benefit from mentoring sessions that are tailored to their specific situation. The core goals of the SAP Social Sabbatical team during their 4-week project was:
- to help identify these critical skills,
- to find a way to assess a woman’s entrepreneurial skill level and come up with ways on how to bridge women’s skill or knowledge gaps,
- to provide a go-to-market strategy when rolling out these services as part of a new venture, called Crystal Consulting.
To accomplish these goals the SAP Social Sabbatical team met with Crystal Fund employees every day and they also visited a 16 women-led enterprises of Crystal customers in Tbilisi, East- and West Georgia. During those visits they interviewed women who already started an enterprise and are looking to expand their business activities. These interviews were not only aimed at finding out which knowledge and skills these women entrepreneurs need, but we also wanted to find out how to best equip these women to consume the services (i.e. training, consulting or mentoring services) that are supposed to help them: Some of the women are not familiar with online classes, some have very little time to attend a training, and also the skill levels with regards to using internet technology vary.
Through these customer visits, my two SAP colleagues and I had the unique opportunity to better understand the needs of Georgian entrepreneurial women and their families, but along the way we also got to learn about the importance of family relationships in Georgia, the enormous energy and the awe-inspiring commitment that many Georgian women demonstrate in striving for business success. In addition, each of us in the SAP team got to experience the amazing hospitality in Georgia: Not only during those customer visits and when working with our hosts, but also when staying overnight with a Crystal customer.
So what was the outcome of our project? Towards the end of the project we presented our findings to a Crystal Fund leadership team and their feedback was positive. We provided numerous ideas for services that could enhance the skills of entrepreneurial women, including training in financial management, marketing, business planning and people management, a platform to network and to explore collaboration options amongst entrepreneurial women, and a proposal for individualized business mentoring. Before too long Crystal Consulting will start its activities and support women entrepreneurship in Georgia through the provision of services and support by mentors. I am confident that this program will help many women to use their full entrepreneurial potential and be economically as successful as they can and deserve to be.
One more thing: To promote the opportunities and the benefits that come with women economic development, Crystal Fund together with the Georgian chess federation organized a combined chess and women entrepreneurship marketing event with the theme “All women are champions”.
To better understand the background of this initiative it is helpful to know that Georgia is a country with a long chess tradition, and in particular in women’s chess Georgia for many years has been extremely successful. It therefore made sense, that two former Georgian world chess champions, Nona Gaprindashvili and Maia Chiburdanidze, were present at the event. In addition, the current Georgian national women chess team were there. This team has very good chances to finish very well (they are ranked #2) at the European Team Chess Championships which takes place 10/23–11/3 in Batumi, Georgia.
The strength and accomplishments of these women were all together fitting to the message of “empowering entrepreneurial potential among Georgian women”. Local TV stations and news agencies covered the event, so the idea to support the empowerment of the entrepreneurial potential among Georgian women received very good publicity.
Finally, and since there is not much opportunity in life to shamelessly show off we met with two world champions:
