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Global Best Practices Template Created
From left to right Cari Keller with Barrera Associates,
Jill Baker and Julie Weeks representing the NWBC, and
Virginia Littlejohn and Elizabeth Vazquez of Project
Tsunami.
Project Tsunami and the National Women’s
Business Council (NWBC) are preparing a report
on best practices in women’s entrepreneurial
development--essentially updating and expanding
a report that the NWBC prepared in 2000 in
advance of an OECD international conference on
women’s entrepreneurship. That report received
widespread distribution, and served as the
impetus for the preparation of a similar report by
Canada in 2000.
The NWBC issued a request for proposal (RFP) to
develop the new “US Handbook of Case Studies,
Best Practices and Recommendations,” and
recently awarded the contract to the womanowned
research firm, Barrera Associates.
The 2004 best practices report will likely receive
a similarly international distribution--first at an
OECD Small and Medium Enterprise (SME)
Ministerial meeting and a Women Entrepreneurial
Best Practices Forum, both in June 2004 in
Istanbul, Turkey, and secondly at an APEC Women
Leaders Network meeting next fall in Chile. Similar
reports are expected from Canada, the United
Kingdom, Sweden, France, and a number of APEC
economies.
The Tsunami-NWBC team developed a set of
criteria for selection and inclusion of
organizations and programs to be profiled in this
US report. Based on these criteria, we have
developed a preliminary list of organizations and
initiatives to feature.
A profile will be developed for each organization
or initiative, including: program description,
mission and history; major issues and needs
addressed; program achievements and successful
program elements; lessons learned; and contact
information.
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Preliminary Criteria for Selection and Inclusion of
Organizations and Initiatives in the United States
include:
• Being at least regional in scope or coverage, and
preferably national. State or local initiatives
and/or organizations will not be included;
• Having either an exclusive or major focus on
women’s enterprise development–meaning that it
should neither be a gender-blind initiative nor one
focused on or including women who are not
engaged in enterprise creation;
• Having a track record of achievement that
appears to be sustainable: new initiatives will not
be included;
• Either providing direct assistance to women
business owners or would-be owners in one or
several areas (such as access to capital, markets,
training or technical assistance), or–by virtue of
their programmatic activity–improving the
environment for women’s enterprise development
generally.
A variety of programs, organizations and initiatives
will be featured, including those in the public
sector, as well as non-profit organizations,
membership associations, foundations, academic
institutions and corporations.
For more information, or to nominate an
organization or initiative, please contact
info@projecttsunami.org.
Cover from the US Case Study presented at the OECD
conference on women's entrepreneurship in November
2000 in Paris.
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Tsunami Receives Official Non-Profit
Status
Project Tsunami has received its
official non-profit 501(c)(3) status
from the US Internal Revenue Service.
Tsunami would like to thank Patti
Richards of the Richards Law Firm in
Atlanta for her efforts in helping
Tsunami secure this important legal
status in record time. The Richards
Law Firm is a Georgia Limited Liability
Company that practices domestic and
international tax law. Patti
Richards can be contacted at
prichards@richardslawfirm.com
About Tsunami
Project Tsunami, Incorporated
(www.projecttsunami.org), is a non-profit
corporation based in Atlanta, Georgia, USA,
that is a global accelerator for women’s
entrepreneurship. It was designed to help
create a tidal wave of economic
opportunities in the U.S. and abroad, by
identifying and connecting key women
entrepreneurial leaders, facilitating the
sharing of best practices across countries,
and helping to link effective programs with
resources. It uses 21st Century technology
to make a clearinghouse of resources and
best practices available to its powerful
global network of leaders and multipliers,
who then disseminate this information
widely to their members and stakeholders.
The organization began its work with a
major seed grant from the Ewing Marion
Kauffman Foundation, which funds
innovative programs that foster
entrepreneurship.
Tsunami is an outgrowth of two major
international conferences on women-owned
small and medium enterprises put on by
the Organization for Economic Cooperation
and Development (OECD) in Paris in 1997
and 2000, for which Tsunami’s CEO Virginia
Littlejohn served as Senior Advisor. Project
Tsunami influences policies, practices and
programs that expand the WE sector by
concentrating on 6 core strategies:
1) WE research, data and statistics;
2) Entrepreneurial education and training;
3) Access to finance;
4) Access to networks and to corporate,
government and international markets;
5) Technology as an entrepreneurial
enabler; and
6) Constituency building and advocacy.
We are also anaylzing how these areas
impact high-growth women entrepreneurs.
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