The Azerbaijan Rural Women’s Association (ARWA) was founded on November 11, 2018 as the first national platform for rural women entrepreneurs and farmers. The association was set up with the support of the Ministry of Agriculture, to sustain and grow, the Women Development and Enterprise Groups(WDEGs) modelled on Self-Help Groups initiated under the Rural Investment Project of the Ministry of Agriculture, that was supported by the World Bank. The project ended in September 2019 and ARWA has since then managed to both sustain the existing groups and to expand them to 50 groups covering 780 rural women in 17 rayons as of August 2021.