Accelerate My Business: Supporting Women Entrepreneurs in Sri Lanka  

In Sri Lanka, women, particularly those from marginalized communities, face significant challenges in entering and succeeding in the labor force. They face a denial of employment, wage gaps, workplace discrimination, and entrenched societal norms that reinforce traditional gender roles. Due to these barriers, the female labor force participation rate in Sri Lanka has stagnated to 30-36% over the past two decades, contrasting sharply with the male participation rate of 71%.  

To circumvent these barriers, many women entrepreneurs have ventured into Sri Lanka’s small and micro-enterprise sector. We’ve worked with Visa to pilot our Accelerate My Business Project, which supports the growth of women-led micro and small businesses across five districts in Sri Lanka. 

The Impact: 

• Provided 35 women entrepreneurs with initial capital grants, enabling them to develop sustainable, innovative business ideas and overcome significant challenges in startup funding. 
• Funded the digitization and localization of the Digital Skills Development training modules in English, Sinhala, and Tamil languages to enhance digital literacy and technological access among women entrepreneurs.  
• Supported the participation of 30 women entrepreneurs in the 2024 International Industry Expo, an event organized to bring together industry-related local and international stakeholders. 

Our efforts and partnership with Visa underscore the transformative impact of targeted support in dismantling barriers and fostering an inclusive economic environment for women entrepreneurs in Sri Lanka. 

Accelerate My Business is part of our Future Skills Alliance, a collective impact platform for private and public sector partners to deliver future skills at scale to the region’s underserved groups by empowering them with resources, skills, and opportunities.