Economic Empowerment and Livelihoods

Talia aims to get young people into productive employment, both formal employment and self-employment through skills training. The skills development and enterprise program offers quality training through identifying occupations in high demand and skills in short supply in partnership with market actors and employers. Talia works in both informal and formal sectors and offers:

  • Access to technical vocational training;
  • Enterprise and institution-based apprenticeships/internships;
  • Entrepreneurship and enterprise development; and
  • Financial literacy and access to finance.
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Talia implements an economic empowerment model whose objectives are:

  • To empower young women through training, capacity building, and skills development.
  • To facilitate access to markets and finance for micro-enterprises.
  • To support the creation of sustainable livelihoods.
  • To create jobs in the poor and marginalized communities through enterprise development.
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The unique elements of the skills development and enterprise program focus on courses lasting several months incorporating both work-readiness (soft) skills and basic technical skills. Talia offers a demand-driven approach, based on consultation with and involvement of employers. The training has a combination of classroom instruction and significant on-the-job training provided by mentors and potential employers (internships), as well as job-search assistance. Talia gains the ‘buy-in’ of employers through the commitment for paying interns an allowance/stipend during the work-related learning experience. There is competitive selection of private sector companies to offer the work-related learning exposure to the interns.

The vocational technical training element is intergrated with entrepreneurship and enterprise development training as well as financial literacy to enable the participating young women to establish their own entrepreneurial ventures upon completion.

Street Business School

Talia Women’s Network is a Global Catalyst Partner of Street Business School (SBS). SBS offers award-winning entrepreneurship training that is interactive, fun and easily adaptable. The training drives sustainable economic impact and improves lives. Through this investment in women, in teaching them business management and financial literacy skills, the women are empowered to set up income generating ventures and increase their household income levels. Their lives are transformed as they can feed their families, send their children to school and afford basic healthcare.

Talia is privileged to be part of this global movement lifting women entrepreneurs and breaking the cycle of extreme poverty.

Together, we can bring the change we were called for. Join us on this remarkable journey and help in changing the lives of women and girls in Southern Africa.

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