Evol is providing loans of up to $50,000 to women entrepreneurs and business owners through the Women Entrepreneurship Loan Fund. Recently, the Honourable Mary Ng, Minister of International Trade, Export Promotion, Small Business and Economic Development, announced and praised this news. The Minister was joined by Emmanuella Lambropoulos, Member of Parliament for Saint-Laurent, and Sevrine Labelle, Chief Executive Officer of Evol.
Minister Ng highlighted that, since its launch, the Women Entrepreneurship Loan Fund has been supporting women entrepreneurs across the country. The fund has distributed $55 million in loans to those starting up and growing their businesses. The majority of the recipients were under-represented women. With Evol set to distribute $7 million in loans, the Government of Canada is ensuring that even more women can access capital to start or grow their businesses.
Evol’s role in the Women Entrepreneurship Loan Fund
Evol will be an important partner in delivering the Women Entrepreneurship Loan Fund in collaboration with its regional loan fund partners. They will work with women entrepreneurs at every stage of the application process and deliver top-quality wrap-around business support. They will be also helping applicants with the development of viable business plans and providing advisory services, training and loan aftercare.
Currently, Evol’s loan fund partners are MicroEntreprendre and Entreprendre ici. Applicants can get in touch with Evol and its loan fund partners to start preparing their business plans for the application process.
For more information on Evol’s Loan Fund Program, visit Evol’s financing page.
The Women Entrepreneurship Loan Fund
The Women Entrepreneurship Loan Fund started as a key part of the $6 billion Women Entrepreneurship Strategy. The initiative allocates funding to not-for-profit organizations. It offers loan programs to provide additional affordable financing to women entrepreneurs. In particular, to start-ups, under-represented groups or sole proprietorships that experience more difficulty in accessing financing.
Selected administrators of the Women Entrepreneurship Loan Fund now delivering the program include:
- Women’s Enterprise Organizations of Canada.
- Northumberland Community Futures Development Corporation (NCFDC).
- Coralus (formerly SheEO).
- The National Aboriginal Capital Corporations Association (NACCA).
This milestone builds on the historic investments the government has made to support women since 2015.
Quotes
“The Women Entrepreneurship Loan Fund was launched to support women-led businesses that may not have been able to reach their full potential. By delivering much-needed access to the financing that women entrepreneurs need to reach their business goals, we’re supporting economic growth. We are fostering the excellence that Canada’s businesses have come to be known for globally. Our government knows that the return on this investment means more than just equal footing for women entrepreneurs. Because when women succeed, we all succeed.” – The Honourable Mary Ng, Minister of International Trade, Export Promotion, Small Business and Economic Development
“It’s great to see that a local organization will be helping women in the Quebec region reach their business goals. The knock-on effect of empowering women with better access to financing will have a measurable economic impact. That benefits us all and will greatly contribute to Canada’s competitiveness and prosperity.” – Emmanuella Lambropoulos, Member of Parliament for Saint-Laurent
“Evol has more than 25 years of experience in financing and specialized support for women-owned businesses. By establishing value-generating businesses, women are actively participating in creating a better world. Thanks to the Women Entrepreneurship Strategy, Evol and its partners, MicroEntreprendre and Entreprendre ici, will be able to support women even more in realizing their ambitions.” – Sevrine Labelle, Chief Executive Officer, Evol
Quick facts
- The Women Entrepreneurship Strategy (WES), a more than $6 billion investment, includes:
- the Women Entrepreneurship Loan Fund, which is enabling existing women-focused loan programs to provide additional affordable microloans to women entrepreneurs;
- the Inclusive Women Venture Capital Initiative, which seeks to strengthen access to funding and build a more inclusive venture capital environment for Canadian women;
- the WES Ecosystem Fund, which is helping remove barriers to the support networks and deliver the resources that women entrepreneurs need to start up, scale up and access new markets; and
- the Women Entrepreneurship Knowledge Hub, which has brought together 10 regional hubs, over 300 organizations and thousands of women entrepreneurs to create a more inclusive and supportive environment to grow women’s entrepreneurship in Canada.
- The government is also investing in removing systemic barriers faced by diverse entrepreneurs through programs like the Black Entrepreneurship Program.
- To ensure women have equal access to the benefits and opportunities arising from international investment, Canada is taking an inclusive approach to trade by integrating gender-related provisions in all its free trade agreements. The government has also co-signed the Global Trade and Gender Arrangement—a stand-alone initiative open to other economies to join.
- Evol operates in Quebec’s 17 regions, and its financing, combined with personalized business support services, enables women entrepreneurs in Quebec to build sustainable and prosperous businesses in line with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.
How do gender inequalities affect the structure of entrepreneurship? Reading “Entrepreneurial Ecosystems: A Gender Perspective” from Banu Ozkazanc-Pan, Ph.D. and Susan Clark Muntean, Ph.D. will shed some light on this topic.
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