At the APEC CEO Summit on 15 November 2023, Mastercard’s Center for Inclusive Growth and CARE, an international humanitarian organization, announced the launch of Mastercard Strive Women. Strive Women is an initiative that aims to strengthen the financial health and resilience of small businesses led by women in the APEC economies of Peru, Vietnam, and Pakistan.
Strive Women will be carried out by CARE through a 9 million U.S.D grant from the Mastercard Impact Fund. This partnership follows the success of the Ignite program that unlocked $154.9 million in loans from an initial grant of $5.26 million with. The initiative will directly support over 300,000 entrepreneurs and reach out to 6 million entrepreneurs through campaigns, with a focus on women to grow their business and increase their economic potential. With the initiative, 79% of female participants increased their sales, and 89% increased their confidence in running the business.
Strive Women will extend its roots to scale into a broader ecosystem of stakeholders committed to long-term support for women-led small businesses. The initiative will address the gender barriers faced by women-led businesses by testing innovations related to the climate crisis and childcare. The initiative helps small business owners balance both household and cash flow and increase women’s decision-making power.
Strive Women will focus on four core pillars of work. These include (1) supporting women-led small businesses to grow through increasing access and usage of financial products; (2) partnering with financial services providers to co-design tailored products; (3) innovating to overcome gender barriers for women-led small businesses, such as childcare; and (4) building ecosystems of support for women small business owners by activating networks and sharing learning tools.