USAID CATALYZE Women Building Resilience
Mobilizing Private Capital for Women
About Us
Photo credit: USAID CATALYZE
The USAID CATALYZE Women Building Resilience (WBR) Activity aims to enhance women’s economic opportunities by mobilizing capital for women-owned small and medium-sized enterprises (W-SMEs). According to the International Finance Corporation, women-led enterprises in developing countries confront an estimated $1.7 trillion financing gap. Nearly 70% of W-SMEs report being underserved by financial institutions, despite evidence that W-SMEs are a good investment. Women consistently repay loans on-time at a higher rate than men, and enterprises with women in leadership generate higher returns for investors than all-male teams. Expanding access to capital for W-SMEs is at the heart of CATALYZE WBR’s work.
The five-year CATALYZE WBR Activity works with partners in multiple countries to design innovative strategies to leverage blended finance to unlock capital for W-SMEs, creating a multiplier effect as investors prioritizing investing in women and other private sector actors scale the Activity’s successful approaches in their work. By September 2024, CATALYZE WBR aims to mobilize at least $30 million in financing for W-SMEs globally.
The goals of CATALYZE WBR are to:
Image  | Empower women to succeed as entrepreneurs by mobilizing capital for W-SMEs via the use of innovative financial technologies and the provision of technical assistance to financial intermediaries. |
Image  | Enable women to thrive as capital allocators by positioning women and women-led funds to invest, thereby enabling women to build wealth and overcome barriers to participation in the economy. |
What We Do and Where We Work
Building Capacity in Financial Institutions through Technical Assistance
CATALYZE WBR offers technical assistance and capacity building to financial institutions to scale access to finance for W-SMEs, with an initial focus in El Salvador. Technical assistance packages are co-designed for each financial institution’s needs. Example support includes: undertaking data-driven gender diagnostics, developing tailored gender lens financing strategies, and designing gender-sensitive policies, products, and processes. Partners include Lendahand, Banco Agricola, Banco América Central, Banco Azul, Banco Cuscatlán, Banco Davivienda, and Banco Promerica.
Spurring Global Innovations
To spur innovation in mobilizing financing for W-SMEs, CATALYZE WBR ran a global innovation competition that sought partners capable of designing and implementing creative solutions to mobilize financing for W-SMEs. CATALYZE WBR is providing ongoing support to the winner of this competition, a crowdfunding platform, as it utilizes a grant to make mission critical technological upgrades to mobilize retail investors to finance W-SMEs at scale.
Contributing to Learning about Gender Lens Financing
CATALYZE WBR’s broader mission is to increase learning and knowledge sharing about gender lens financing across international development sectors. The activity is compiling evidence on ways to encourage financial institutions and other financial intermediaries to increase access to finance for W-SMEs
Expected Results
$30 million in financing mobilized for W-SMEs
1,500 W-SMEs access financing
Increased learning and knowledge about best practices to increase access to finance for W-SMEs