- The agreement is part of the “Smart Villages, Sustainable Well-Being” initiative of the Ministry of Infrastructure, Communications and Transportation (SICT).
- It seeks to strengthen women entrepreneurs’ personal, digital, and business skills.
- The agreement builds on the 2023 collaboration in which women entrepreneurs from the villages of Yaxcabá and Tekax in the Yucatán and Tonalá and Mezcalapa in Chiapas received entrepreneurial training support.
The SICT and Pro Mujer signed an agreement to provide entrepreneurial training opportunities to women in rural areas with limited connectivity in Southeast Mexico.
The agreement seeks to strengthen women entrepreneurs’ personal, digital, and business skills by providing targeted training that responds to the specific needs of rural women.
The partnership is part of the “Smart Villages, Sustainable Well-Being” project, implemented by the Information and Knowledge Society Coordinator (CSIC) of the SICT and was signed by the head of the CSIC, Jesús Águila Hermoso, and Mónica Ducoing, the Pro Mujer Country Representative in Mexico.
Training will be provided via Emprende Pro Mujer as part of the agreement. This entrepreneurial training platform uses an intersectional, hybrid model designed for and adapted to the needs of rural women.
To date, Pro Mujer has used the platform to impact the lives of more than 2,000 women in Southeast Mexico, 99% of whom stated that the platform helped them improve their businesses.
The agreement will also enable development opportunities in rural areas, where approximately 50% of the productive population comprises women or Indigenous people, thus improving women’s well-being and that of their families and communities.
The digital inclusion initiative “Smart Villages, Sustainable Well-Being” currently has 76 sites in rural locations and seeks to connect rural communities to the Internet. The initiative uses a four-step model of digital inclusion: Access, Usage, Appropriation, and Well-being. In March 2023, the project was recognized in Geneva, Switzerland.
To date, it has benefited more than 100,000 people in 76 villages across 16 states, a clear commitment to bridging the digital divide, mainly in rural and hard-to-reach areas.
The agreement formalizes the collaboration between Pro Mujer and the SICT during 2023, in which 100 women entrepreneurs from the villages of Yaxcabá and Tekax in the Yucatán and Tonalá and Mezcalapa in Chiapas received entrepreneurial training support.
Entrepreneurs interested in accessing the training resources should sign up here:
https://emprendepromujer.org/programas
To learn more about the “Smart Villages, Sustainable Well-Being” program, visit:
