Five CEED Projects That Empower Women

For International Women’s Day, CEED Concordia would like to highlight the projects we’ve done this year that empower women in Montreal, Gulu and Colombia. Whether it’s by narrowing the digital gap by educating girls in ICT skills or training women in entrepreneurship…CEED’s projects have women’s empowerment at heart!

Women’s Solidarity Project

Artist Sabrina Amado from Montréal is one of the entrepreneurs that benefitted from the Women’s Solidarity Project training program.

Nuestro Flow and CEED Concordia formed a partnership to offer a project that aims to counteract existing issues related to discrimination and structural gender inequalities in entrepreneurship. The research portion of the project aimed to identify particular racial and gender barriers BIPOC women might face in their entrepreneurial pursuits. The women entrepreneurs that took part in the research project also benefitted from a tailored entrepreneurship training program. The entrepreneur training portion of the project trained nine women from Quebec and twelve from Colombia.

VDOC Project

Oh My Deer Café owner Claudia Gamboa from Montréal was featured in the 2021 VDOC Project along with four other women entrepreneurs.

Representation matters. Every year since its conception the VDOC project aims to shift the narrative of underrepresented communities in Montreal by providing positive representation of black people or people from visible minority backgrounds in the community. This year the VDOC project featured five women entrepreneurs from Canada and Colombia in their documentary film!

Tech-Ed Program

Gulu High School girls from the TECH ED Fall cohort 2021 learning ICT skills.

CEED Concordia decided to tackle its digital gap with the Tech Ed Program. The program educates Gulu High School students in basic coding skills and Information and Communications Technology. Thanks to the program, 22 High School girls from Gulu Uganda have completed CEED’s ICT certificate program and have continued to advance their ICT skills on their own or through one-on-one mentorship opportunities offered by CEED.

Youth Social Entrepreneurship Project (YEP)

Women in South Sudan at a shea crushing facility employed by a student-led business that received training through the YEP Project. Credits: Rak-Shea Solutions.

CEED Concordia, joined by five mentors and seven partners offered training to ten student entrepreneurs and helped them start five businesses. The student businesses participating in the program were selected on the merit of their social responsibility. Rak-Shea Solutions, one of the student businesses from our YEP Project, currently provides gainful employment to women in South Sudan at a shea crushing facility.

Kabale University Project

CEED Concordia CEO Hawa Keita and Co-Director Luke Ofungi meeting with representatives from partner Kabale University.

This project offers a cost-effective, decentralized e-learning platform that will give women teachers in Uganda the opportunity to continue their education and upgrade their qualifications. This initiative plans to target around 200 women from three districts in Southern Uganda.