Working Women Celebrate
Sheffield’s Working Women celebrate international women’s enterprise day
The Entrepreneurs Ladder social enterprise, founded by Christina Trindade and supported by Tina English of Barclays, have just held their annual Working Woman celebration on international women's enterprise day. The event was held at Barclays new flagship branch in Sheffield City Centre, with some inspiring local entrepreneurs and most importantly, afternoon tea!
Organising the event with Christina for over fifty local women business owners was Entrepreneurs Ladder member Faye Smith, who founded Keep your Fork marketing and training consultancy last year.
Christina explained, "Last year we ran an amazing all day Working Woman expo and evening student recycled fashion show which attracted over 300 women. Nearly every Sheffield sixth form school and college entered and the buzz was fantastic. The Birkdale sixth formers who helped us run it won school enterprise club of the year because of their involvement with so many business women, and their talented girls helped us again this year for useful work experience in events management. This time we decided on a different theme- female enterprise success which can impact the world.
We are all busy trying to beat the economic gloom in our businesses and organise these networking events voluntarily to benefit women, so we invited a variety of truly inspiring speakers who could motivate and encourage all our business women to keep on going, get our names out there and get some perspective. For those of us who felt like the credit crunch was just the last straw, hearing local entrepreneur Martin Garner who runs Rwanda Child speaking about abused widows with Aids who had survived the atrocities of the genocide only to be unable to provide food for their families certainly put our own challenges into perspective."
Faye continues, "I am proud to be one of Martin's supporters. He runs a charity which helps women to learn a trade. Just a few pounds a month can train a Rwandan would-be entrepreneur in hairdressing, beauty or tailoring- and we felt it was important we remembered women all across the world today who have nothing like the support networks and resources we do.
We also heard from Anne Lockwood at Sereneti executive coaching who gave us the secrets of positive self talk and Jodie Marshall who at the tender age of only 24 became self-employed straight from university, successfully founding social enterprise A Mind Apart theatre company. Her energy and passion were contagious, from drama restoring self esteem among street children in Brazil to bringing together disengaged youth in some of Sheffield's schools, we all learnt so many things.
Tina English, women's business manager of Barclays finished, "We were delighted with the response to our very special line up- the feedback has been tremendous. Our ladies particularly valued hearing Faye's top tips about creating your own personal brand, vital in these difficult and highly competitive times and delivered in her inimitable entertaining style. From developing contact lists to collecting clients endorsements and connecting people, we all went away with invaluable tools to ensure business success."
For more details on our speakers, Working Woman or the Entrepreneurs Ladder, contact Tina on 0777 5550224 or visit http://www.entrepreneursladder.co.uk/