Business Leadership Program

The Business Leadership program is a joint project between the Inter-American Commission of Women (Inter-American Commission of Women) and the Young Americans Business Trust (YABT) of the OAS Unit for Social Development and Education. It aims to train women and men in business leadership skills, with an emphasis on non-traditional careers. It is being co-sponsored by the Office of the Under Secretary for Equal Opportunity of the Buenos Aires government in Argentina and began in April 2001 with a training course.

It focuses on the following areas of interest:

• nontraditional career training (information technologies, e-commerce);
  
• job creation;
  
• business planning;
  
• access to credit;
  
• distance education and training (on-line seminars);
  
• women's participation and leadership;
  
• networking;
  
• negotiation;
  
• balancing work and family;
  
• training of trainers.
  

The support of private corporations is to be included in the early stages of the project design. Local arrangements will also be made with businesses, universities, chambers of commerce, professional associations, civic associations specializing in women's issues and gender issues, and government agencies, in order to organize local and regional seminars.

The overall aim is to provide young people with business-related abilities and skills throughout all stages of the business cycle, in particular in non-traditional fields. The project is to be implemented with the help of partnerships and networks with local and regional players and non-governmental organisations. Specifically, the project aims to:

• facilitate access for young women and men to all the information they need to undertake new business endeavours, as well as their access to resources and financial services;
  
• equip participants with the technical tools they need to develop a business plan and identify strategies for growth and expansion, exposing them to real-life experiences described by prominent businesswomen;
  
• provide leadership training to participants, adapted to the local context, identifying the obstacles that arise during different stages of business;
  
• hold different events that offer opportunities for dialogue and interaction between the participants and prominent women executives.
  

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