SheTrades Hub is an ini­tia­tive of the In­ter­na­tion­al Trade Cen­tre (ITC) that aims to con­nect women en­tre­pre­neurs to in­ter­na­tion­al mar­kets. This on­line plat­form pro­vides op­por­tu­ni­ties for women-owned busi­ness­es to show­case their prod­ucts and ser­vices to in­ter­na­tion­al buy­ers, net­work and ac­cess learn­ing, in­vest­ment and busi­ness op­por­tu­ni­ties to take their busi­ness glob­al.

The T&T SheTrades Hub, the first in the Caribbean, was launched by the Min­istry of Trade and In­dus­try and ex­porTT in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the ITC in Oc­to­ber 2020. The Hub’s mem­ber­ship con­tin­ues to grow from 125 women-led busi­ness­es in De­cem­ber 2020 to over 700 to­day.

Through the SheTrades Ini­tia­tive, women-owned busi­ness­es in T&T have been able to:

i. In­crease net­work­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties with oth­er women en­tre­pre­neurs, buy­ers and in­vestors;

ii. Ex­pand knowl­edge in trade and ex­port through tar­get­ed train­ing and ca­pac­i­ty-build­ing work­shops; and

iii. Ex­pand their busi­ness­es through B2Bs, trade fairs and trade shows.

IWD Busi­ness Sem­i­nar–“Count Her In: In­vest in Women. Ac­cel­er­ate Progress”

The Min­istry of Trade and In­dus­try in col­lab­o­ra­tion with ex­porTT host­ed a Busi­ness Sem­i­nar to com­mem­o­rate In­ter­na­tion­al Women’s Day on March 8, 2024, at the Gov­ern­ment Cam­pus Au­di­to­ri­um, Port-of-Spain. The event was held un­der the Unit­ed Na­tions theme “Count Her In: In­vest in Women Ac­cel­er­ate Progress” and in­clud­ed par­tic­i­pa­tion from sev­er­al gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials, fe­male busi­ness ex­ec­u­tives and en­tre­pre­neurs, in­clud­ing those reg­is­tered on the lo­cal SheTrades Hub and fe­male sec­ondary school stu­dents and teach­ers.

Amongst the at­ten­dees were Mrs Sharon Row­ley, Paula Gopee-Scoon, Min­is­ter of Trade and In­dus­try and oth­er gov­ern­ment min­is­ters.

Par­tic­i­pat­ing schools were Tran­quil­li­ty Sec­ondary School, Holy Name Con­vent, Port-of-Spain; Wood­brook Sec­ondary School; St Joseph Con­vent, Port-of-Spain and St James Sec­ondary School.

The sem­i­nar fea­tured in­spir­ing and mo­ti­vat­ing pre­sen­ta­tions by two guest speak­ers,  Ak­ousua Dar­d­aine Ed­wards and Dr Win­nette McIn­tosh Am­brose, who shared their sto­ries of en­tre­pre­neur­ship, ad­vice, chal­lenges and suc­cess­es.

Ed­wards is a Gen­der and En­tre­pre­neur Spe­cial­ist and founder of the En­abling En­ter­prise Project in T&T. She has won awards for So­cial En­tre­pre­neur of the Year in T&T and Caribbean Fe­male So­cial En­tre­pre­neur of the Year from the Glob­al In­no­va­tion Part­ners. She was named one of the 2019 Women’s Eco­nom­ic Am­bas­sadors by Di­ver­si­ty RD Glob­al.

Dr Am­brose, orig­i­nal­ly from T&T, is a grad­u­ate of the Mass­a­chu­setts In­sti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy in chem­i­cal en­gi­neer­ing and has a PhD in bio­med­ical en­gi­neer­ing from Johns Hop­kins Uni­ver­si­ty. She is an en­gi­neer-turned-en­tre­pre­neur and a two-time Food Net­work cham­pi­on. She is the own­er of the bak­eries “Souk” and “The Sweet Lob­by” in Wash­ing­ton, DC.

The sem­i­nar al­so high­light­ed the achieve­ments of the SheTrades Hub

• Trained over 160 women across T&T in the ar­eas of Iden­ti­fy­ing and As­sess­ing Ex­port Mar­kets; De­vel­op­ing Ex­port Plans, Ex­port Readi­ness and Fol­low­ing up on Ex­port Leads, to fur­ther strength­en their busi­ness skills;

• Fund­ed the par­tic­i­pa­tion of 24 fe­male en­tre­pre­neurs to par­tic­i­pate and show­case their prod­ucts at in­ter­na­tion­al and re­gion­al trade shows in Madrid, St Lu­cia and Bar­ba­dos. The na­tion­al ex­port pro­mo­tion agency ex­porTT is work­ing with these women to fol­low up on leads gen­er­at­ed; and

• Fund­ed the par­tic­i­pa­tion of 66 women-owned busi­ness­es to par­tic­i­pate at lo­cal trade shows and mar­kets, in­clud­ing the Ex­port Cen­tres Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed Craft Mar­ket and the T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion Trade and In­vest­ment Con­ven­tion. Through these ini­tia­tives, these busi­ness­es were able to boost their vis­i­bil­i­ty, in­crease sales and ex­pand busi­ness con­nec­tions.

De­liv­er­ing re­marks at the event, the Min­is­ter of Trade and In­dus­try con­grat­u­lat­ed the women for join­ing the SheTrades Hub and tak­ing ad­van­tage of the op­por­tu­ni­ties to start and grow their busi­ness­es. Gopee-Scoon en­cour­aged the stu­dents to cap­i­talise on their aca­d­e­m­ic stud­ies and har­ness their in­nate in­ge­nu­ity, pas­sion and cre­ativ­i­ty to cul­ti­vate new ideas that may be turned in­to valu­able goods, ser­vices and busi­ness op­por­tu­ni­ties for T&T. She not­ed that “en­tre­pre­neur­ship is about more than just start­ing a busi­ness; it is about cre­at­ing your own path, shap­ing your own fu­ture and mak­ing a mean­ing­ful im­pact on so­ci­ety. By choos­ing en­tre­pre­neur­ship, you are choos­ing to be the ar­chi­tects of your own fu­ture.”  

Pamela Coke-Hamil­ton, ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of the In­ter­na­tion­al Trade Cen­tre (ITC) al­so de­liv­ered re­marks vir­tu­al­ly. She con­grat­u­lat­ed T&T on the work it has been do­ing to sup­port women-owned busi­ness­es and con­veyed the ITC’s con­tin­ued sup­port for the lo­cal SheTrades Hub.

Women in SheTrades Hub speak

In re­la­tion to this year’s theme, “Count her In: In­vest in Women. Ac­cel­er­ate Progress”, how has the hub in­vest­ed in you as a woman and con­tributed to ac­cel­er­at­ing your progress in the world of busi­ness?”

Jeanette Mar­celle

Hand­made by Jeanette

I have done sev­er­al train­ing cours­es avail­able on the SheTrades plat­form. Of all the cours­es, the one that I found re­al­ly help­ful in turn­ing my busi­ness around was the ex­port readi­ness course. It as­sist­ed me in de­cid­ing which prod­ucts were best for ex­port­ing, which mar­kets were suit­able to en­ter and how to ap­proach a buy­er/cus­tomer once I fi­nal­ly en­tered those mar­kets to close a sale. Hav­ing the sup­port of SheTrades for me means I can tru­ly grow with my busi­ness. I now feel like I have a seat at the ta­ble; I am count­ed in.

Joyce­lyn Fran­cois Opadeyi

Age with Joy

SheTrades is a tremen­dous plat­form for women in busi­ness. As a unique ser­vice provider of Re­tire­ment and El­der­ly Care ser­vices, (Age With JOY), this schol­ar­ship from WTO/ITC has ex­posed me to many un­con­ven­tion­al train­ing pos­si­bil­i­ties in oth­er coun­tries, re-ig­nit­ed the pas­sion to ful­fil my dream and in­spired pos­i­tive en­er­gy to fur­ther grow and ex­cel in my busi­ness. I have re­turned home with greater strength and con­vic­tion know­ing that there ex­ists a high-lev­el sup­port glob­al­ly for the com­mu­ni­ty of busi­ness­women who dare to step out of tra­di­tion­al work fields, de­fy the odds and, in­stead of fo­cus­ing on imag­in­ing, de­sign and ex­e­cute their dreams. I am con­vinced that is where the fu­ture of in­no­va­tion lies for us, women in busi­ness.

Kedel­la Isaac

Jhenel­la Isaac Lux­u­ry Hand­bags

SheTrades has fa­cil­i­tat­ed and ac­cel­er­at­ed my busi­ness growth and ex­ports by of­fer­ing train­ing and op­por­tu­ni­ties that have en­abled me to gain valu­able in­sight in­to new in­ter­na­tion­al mar­kets, ex­pose my busi­ness to new glob­al op­por­tu­ni­ties, and pre­pare my busi­ness for ex­pan­sion in­to these new eco­nom­ic ter­ri­to­ries.

Dilean Smith

Just D’s

As a lead busi­ness, Just D’s is com­mit­ted to flour­ish­ing in the dy­nam­ic land­scape of agro-pro­cess­ing. I am very ap­pre­cia­tive of the sup­port giv­en through the hub. The plat­form pro­vid­ed a means to fos­ter growth, in­no­va­tion, and in­ter­na­tion­al col­lab­o­ra­tion with women in dif­fer­ent spheres. Thank you for cham­pi­oning women en­tre­pre­neurs and fos­ter­ing a thriv­ing ecosys­tem and dig­i­tal­iza­tion sys­tem for our busi­ness­es.

Cas­san­dra Ramdin

Ramdins Con­sul­tan­cy

The SheTrades plat­form has a lot of use­ful, in­for­ma­tive we­bi­na­rs with great pan­el­lists. I’ve learned a great deal from these ses­sions on how women-led busi­ness­es can have an ad­van­tage as small and medi­um-sized en­ter­pris­es (SMEs). I have ben­e­fit­ted from sev­er­al free train­ings and events that are of­fered. Be­ing a part of this hub has al­so giv­en me great op­por­tu­ni­ties, most re­cent­ly, the chance to at­tend the WTO-ITC SheTrades Sum­mit in Abu Dhabi.

To be a part of this ini­tia­tive, and to con­nect to a strong net­work of busi­ness sup­port en­ti­ties and women-led busi­ness­es, join the ITC SheTrades T&T HUB to­day at

https://ex­portt.co.tt/ex­port-re­sources/shetrades-tt