History
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 44 groups covering 600 rural women in 22 rayons as of August 2021. Groups are being formed on a regular basis as there is considerable scope to scale up the WDEGs across the country and strong demand from rural women and local authorities to further expand the geographical scope of the model.
ARWA supports its members on multiple levels:
-It provides voice to rural women’s issues in particular constraints faced by women farmers and entrepreneurs.
-It provides technical support to the WDEGs to upgrade their skills and to learn from each other.
Mentoring of new groups is actively undertaken by experienced groups.
The WDEGs provide supportive network to all members that is constantly learning and sharing knowledge
It provides an enterprise support system through its incubators staffed by Community Business Promoters who help incubate, expand and diversify the businesses and help negotiate funding from banks.
It helps groups link to relevant government programs and partners with projects and programs of the government, international donors and the private sector. See partnership page for more details.