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Road to Istanbul
UK, US and Canada Share
Best Practices Online and
Via Videoconference
Barbara Mowat of Canada, front row center, addresses
Trilateral participants in London via videoconference, as
she, American participants and members of the UK
Study Tour meet in Washington, DC.
A Trilateral Virtual Summit on Women’s
Entrepreneurship with leaders and experts from
the UK, the US and Canada was hosted over the
Internet from April 19 to May 7, 2004. This
Internet-based exchange of best practices,
research and data on the importance of women’s
entrepreneurship to economic growth will be
discussed at two OECD events in Istanbul in June.
The Summit included the availability of data and
statistics on women’s entrepreneurship; key
challenges to the growth of women’s
entrepreneurship, and what is being done to
overcome the challenges; best practices and
lessons learned; creation of domestic policy
recommendations; strategies to educate policy
makers and the media about women
entrepreneurs and their economic and social
impact in each country; and opportunities for local
stakeholders to work together.
Each country posted a video clip of a national
leader, who provided an overview of the state of
women’s entrepreneurship in that country.
On May 7, a live videoconference was hosted
among leaders from each country to discuss
Trilateral results and next steps. Feedback was
extremely positive, and a results report will be
published in June, 2004.
Project Tsunami also hosted a Study Tour from
the UK organized by PROWESS, the government sponsored
organization dedicated to encouraging
the growth of women-owned business. Details
regarding this initiative and its results will be
included in the next issue of the Wave.
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Top WE Experts in the World
to Meet in Istanbul and
Virtual Istanbul
The prestigious OECD in Paris is hosting an
87-country Ministerial Conference on small and
medium enterprises (SMEs) from June 4-5, 2004,
at the Lufti Kirdar Convention Center in Istanbul.
Women’s entrepreneurship is one of the key
strategies that SME ministers and ministers of
the economy/industry will look at to grow their
national economies and create jobs. (In parallel
with the Ministerial, the OECD is organizing a
Business Symposium focused on Information and
Communications Technologies on June 3, and a
Global Marketplace from June 3-6.)
The OECD is also hosting the “Accelerating
Women’s Entrepreneurship Forum,” a
high-powered meeting of many of the top experts
in the world on women’s entrepreneurship, which
will be held at the Intercontinental Hotel in
Istanbul from June 5-7. See information about
registering in column 3.
The Forum is being organized in partnership with
Project Tsunami, a global accelerator for women’s
entrepreneurship, which grew out of a 50-country
OECD conference on women’s entrepreneurship in
Paris in 2000. Other organizers include the
Kagider Association of Women Entrepreneurs in
Turkey, plus the Turkish Ministry of Industry and
KOSGEB. Tsunami’s CEO, Virginia Littlejohn—the
OECD’s Senior Advisor for Women’s Entrepreneurship
since 1996—is co-chairing the Forum.
The Forum is designed to put women’s entrepreneurship
onto the global agenda, both politically
and economically. Leaders from around the world
will attend, including prominent women entrepreneurs,
presidents of top women entrepreneurial
NGOs, ministers and policymakers, decisionmakers
from international institutions, researchers,
investors, and corporate and foundation
executives—all stakeholders invested in the
future growth of women’s entrepreneurship. We
will announce several major initiatives at a press
conference at the conclusion of the Forum.
Leaders and experts will participate in a moderated
online forum—Virtual Istanbul, from May 15
to June 4—to share best practices, and sharpen
and update recommendations from previous OECD
women entrepreneurial conferences held in Paris
in 1997 and 2000. Recommendations from
Virtual Istanbul will be forwarded to the OECD for
consideration at the Ministerial workshop on
women’s entrepreneurship.
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OECD WE Forum Registration and Sponsorship Opportunities
For more information on how
to register for the OECD Accelerating
Women's Entrepreneurship Forum,
or to find out about event sponsorship
opportunities, please send an
email with your request to
info@projecttsunami.org or call
1 (202) 332-4411. Thank you.
About Tsunami
Project Tsunami, Incorporated
(www.projecttsunami.org), is a non-profit
corporation based in the United States that
is a global accelerator for women’s
entrepreneurship. It was designed to help
create a tidal wave of economic
opportunities in the US 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. IBM is a Diamond
Sponsor.
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 analyzing how these areas
impact high-growth women entrepreneurs.
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