Women Entrepreneurs Defy Failure in She Can ‘19

Entreprenelle, a social enterprise, held its annual event She Can for the third year in a row. This year, the event’s theme was successful failures; all talks and discussions focused on overcoming failure, frustration, and learning from your mistakes to achieve success.

More than 5,000 attendees from different age groups and more than 50 entities including UN Women, the Swedish Embassy, The National Council for Women, Nahdet Masr, Orange, and Export Development Bank participated in She Can.

All entities contributed to supporting women in business, including Hakima, an app that provides users with nursing services and home care.

"We’ve taken powerful steps to support women. We’re supporting Syrian refugees with nursing certifications, we’re raising engagement level with them. We also announced at Africa Startup Summit that we will support women entrepreneurs with our experience in ten African countries to launch 7keema in their own countries,” Kareem Yehia, Marketing Head at 7keema told EgyptInnovate.

"We’re facing challenges because of the negative perception of the Egyptian society to the nursing community. This problem exists partly because of some regulations that don’t fully recognize the rights of the nursing community, and partly because of some problems within the nursing community itself. This is what we’re trying to solve at 7keema,” continued Yehia.

Noon Academy, an educational platform with e-classes, was also present. Noon Academy allows teachers to explain, and for students to engage with them and ask questions, which saves time, money, and allows students to avoid crowded classes. It also holds students competitions, quizzes, and exercises for students.

Noon Academy launched its services in Saudi Arabia three years ago, and it attracted more than one million users, and it launched in Egypt a month ago and attracted 20,000 users in just a few weeks.

“She Can is not just a motivational conference, there are actually people who will equip you with tools. Many of the attendees here know what they want to do, and the ones who don’t, network well. They ask specific and smart questions. I like that the entities are relevant to the audience here, in general, the organization is very good,” said Amr El Selouky, Business Development Manager at Noon Academy.

"We have free scholarships for high school students, they can download the application and study for free with the most famous teachers in Egypt,” added Selouky.
 
Environment sustainability companies were also present, including Environeur, a non-profit platform with Arabic content about the environment for researchers and readers interested in the environment. Volunteers translated more than one thousand articles and 500 videos to Arabic ever since the platform was launched a year and a half ago.

“We aim to spread environmental awareness and educate people about the importance of waste. Some countries such as China and Germany, recycle waste and then import it to us again in the form of new products,” Dina Abdel-Aziz from the Social Media Marketing team at Environeur told EgyptInnovate.

Abdel-Aziz added that Environeur will work on connecting environmental entrepreneurs with investors and providing them with the needed resources to start successful companies.

Entrepreneurship opportunities at the event included programs from Eyouth company. The company is currently offering many entrepreneurship training programs in many governorates including Suez, Beni Suef, Luxor, and PortSaid, and a competition with a prize of EGP 100,000 for startups.

Over the past three years, Entreprenelle reached 20,000 women all over Egypt, through diverse programs that focus on women empowerment.

While Entreprenelle focuses on marginalized governorates with poor resources and infrastructures, it also holds many programs in Cairo that develop skills in crafts and fashion, among other industries