The BREAK THE SILENCE Foundation, in collaboration with UN Women, organized this Thursday in Bibwa, in the municipality of Nsele, an intergenerational Gender Coffee on the theme of women’s entrepreneurship. This brought together around a hundred participants, the majority of whom were young women between the ages of 18 and 35 who were keen to make their businesses profitable. They were selected with the involvement of the National Youth Council. Several clubs for female entrepreneurs were set up as a result of this work and will be the subject of special monitoring by the BREAK THE SILENCE Foundation.
This workshop, organized on the sidelines of International Youth Day, responds to the concern to involve young people in active life, through income-generating activities. It mainly revolved around the exchange of experiences between the participants and panelists, chosen for their experience and their successful career in entrepreneurship:
- Tysia Mukuna from the coffee sector, founder of the La Kinoise coffee brand
- Éric Casinga from plastics processing, founder of Recoplast
Through their questions, the participants addressed the conditions for the success of a business, such as the management of legal constraints (taxes, fees, royalties, etc.), access to credit as well as market requirements.
In her speech, Mrs. Catherine Odimba , Deputy Representative of UN Women in the Democratic Republic of Congo stressed that “women’s entrepreneurship has a very significant economic impact and is obviously a good lever for gender equality and for Sustainable development. “Building the entrepreneurial skills of women and girls is all the more important as the DRC and the world recover from the COVID-19 crisis.
To close these exchanges of great wealth, the godmother of the BREAK THE SILENCE Foundation, Mrs. Jeanine Mabunda encouraged the girls of Kinshasa to undertake a lucrative activity and not always rely on their parents or their husbands.
The BREAK THE SILENCE Foundation, created in 2016, is a non-profit association which aims to help women and children who are victims of violence in post-conflict countries, particularly in the Democratic Republic of Congo, in through health and legal assistance or by working for their social reintegration.
It thus makes it possible to strengthen long-term actions by mobilizing human and financial resources to support social and educational programs; and by working in close collaboration with state, semi-public or private bodies acting in the fight against sexual violence and the recruitment of children.
UN Women is the United Nations entity dedicated to gender equality and the empowerment of women. A global standard bearer for women and girls, UN Women was created to accelerate the improvement of the status of women and to meet their needs around the world and in the Democratic Republic of Congo through a triple mandate: normative, programmatic and coordination. africa.unwomen.org
Contacts:
Adriana Borra
UN Women Communications Specialist,
adriana.borra@unwomen.org
+243 971 564 967
Gladys Mambulu
Public Relations Manager
Break the Silence Foundation
bls16@gmail.com
+243 816 891 288.