The city of Lisboa, together with Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro, and São Paulo, has obtained approval for financial support from the Ibero-American Capital Cities Union (ICCU) to fund a social entrepreneurship project called "Women with Impact." This project aims to empower women from particularly vulnerable backgrounds to develop their businesses.
The Lisboa City Council is positioning itself at the forefront of promoting and fostering projects for female empowerment in this context. The underlying idea of the project, which began on May 10, 2023, is to provide training to the four ICCU cities (including Lisbon) so that they can respectively promote a program to enhance businesses led by women in their territories. The ultimate goal is to empower a total of 50 women entrepreneurs through the project.
The various stages of the project include local scouting for participants in the cities that make up the program's network, training of trainers in the field of entrepreneurship, and the promotion of capacity-building activities for the participants. These activities will provide them with tools to address matters such as business positioning in the market and defining their own business models.
Diogo Moura, the councilor for Economy and Innovation in the Lisboa City Council, believes that this social entrepreneurship project contributes to “reducing the persistent gender differences that tend to disadvantage women. Additionally, it specifically creates opportunities for women from socially vulnerable contexts, which represents a double disadvantage at the outset. The goal of equal access to opportunities is only achieved when it is guaranteed for all individuals”.
As this project is implemented as a network, there will be a sharing of experiences among the various partners/cities, their local coordination teams, and experts. As evident, "Women with Impact" has significance and dimensions that go beyond the boundaries of the city that initiated it. Therefore, its promotion is more than justified. In fact, communicating the expected positive results of the project is one of the planned phases in its schedule. On that occasion, the best practices resulting from this network project will be shared within the ICCU.

Link: Mulheres com Impacto - Empreendedorismo Feminino entre cidades Ibero-Americanas