The Strive Women Capacity Building Program has officially entered Phase 2, building on the momentum of Phase 1, where 2,448 women entrepreneurs participated in capacity-building trainings across Pakistan. Strive Women operates as a four-year program running from 2023 to 2027, led by CARE and supported by a 9 million dollar grant from the Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth, extending an earlier initiative called Ignite that had already unlocked 154.9 million dollars in loans for entrepreneurs from an initial 5.26 million dollar grant, giving this Pakistan-focused phase a well-established institutional track record to build on.
Across Karachi, Hyderabad, Rawalpindi, Multan, Mirpur Khas, and Jamshoro, more than 200 women entrepreneurs have come together for an intensive three-day learning journey designed to strengthen their businesses and turn ideas into opportunities. The geographic spread, reaching beyond Pakistan’s largest metropolitan centers into cities such as Mirpur Khas and Jamshoro, reflects Strive Women’s stated design principle of supporting micro and small enterprises that have historically remained underserved, with the program specifically targeting women-led businesses that have been operating for at least two years and employ at least two staff members.
The trainings covered practical areas including business and financial management, digital skills, social media marketing, financial literacy, and digital financial services, addressing gaps CARE’s own baseline research has identified among women entrepreneurs in the program, including that one in three entrepreneurs do not keep business records and only about half can access the capital needed to keep their business afloat after a financial setback. Rather than treating digital skills and financial literacy as separate tracks, the training’s integrated approach reflects an understanding that women running small businesses in Pakistan often need simultaneous support across multiple operational weaknesses rather than a single specialized intervention.
Organizers emphasized that the three days were about more than learning alone, framing the sessions around building confidence, making connections, sharing experiences, and discovering new possibilities among participants. That framing aligns with CARE’s own program-wide findings, which show that women entrepreneurs already possess strong foundations in business management skills but that long-term growth depends equally on removing external barriers such as limited access to finance, restrictive social norms, and unequal caregiving responsibilities that affect roughly half of participating entrepreneurs. As Phase 2 continues, Strive Women aims to reach more women entrepreneurs across Pakistan, extending its broader goal of directly supporting more than 300,000 entrepreneurs across Pakistan, Peru, and Vietnam by 2027.
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