The start-up sector in Australia is thriving, with incubators and business education programs across Australia supporting entrepreneurs to launch their business. What is missing in the entrepreneurship ecosystem is tailored support at the earliest stages of business- ideation- and accessibility for people who are excluded from the mainstream start-up sector due to their circumstances.
Global Sisters does not just work with women who already have a business idea, we also work with women who are at the idea or even pre-idea stage. We are addressing the gap in the market by offering our My Big Idea workshop and GLO Youth Challenge for under 24s. These programs are designed to help women create a viable business idea that can then be taken forward to the set-up and start-up stage in our Sister School program.
Santa and Holla, the young Sydney women behind Wild by Soulexplor3r, created their business idea by participating in the GLO Youth Challenge. They identified a need in the community for natural beauty and hair products, specifically for African hair and skin. They are on a mission to see young Australian women of African descent embrace their natural beauty, rather than hiding it under synthetic wigs and damaging their hair with chemical products.
“Beauty to us is being comfortable in our own skin. And, realising how important it is for each one of us to form our own definition of what is beautiful, we knew that we wanted a product that does not cover our flaws but rather gives us an opportunity to develop self-confidence”.
Holla and Santa have now developed and market tested an initial product range and are about to participate in Sister School to take their idea forward.
Follow their journey at on Instagram@wildbysoulexplor3r or Facebook
My Big Idea workshop continues to have outstanding impact across the country in making entrepreneurship accessible for women at the earliest stage of business ideation, and even for women who didn’t know that business was a genuine possibility for them. Since we launched the My Big Idea workshop, 400 women have found their big idea in business or clarified their next steps in training or job seeking.
Sister School is our foundational business education program that supports women with the knowledge, skills and confidence to get their business off the ground. Sister School is delivered using a blend of online and face-to-face, depending of the needs of the individual cohort. It is highly practical and helps women move from ideation to set up or set up to start up phase.
For example, the Create My Brand session of Sister School addresses practical barriers such as design cost by empowering Sisters to create their own brand using the free design platform Canva. Penny is an older woman living in the Hume region of Victoria and created the visual identity for her new business Reminiscence Quilts using Canva. She now has a logo, fonts, brand colours, images, business cards and a series of social media marketing collateral ready for her business launch:
Mandy Richards, CEO/ Founder of Global Sisters comments “As an organisation, Global Sisters can now scale our business education program and enhance our existing content at a level that would never have been possible without LinkedIn Learning. We are incredibly excited about where this partnership could take us. It helps LinkedIn Learning too, as Global Sisters engages women who LinkedIn typically cannot reach but wants to include on their platform, and then activates the take up of learning through our face-to-face programs”.
Another example of experiential learning is our pilot program with LinkedIn Learning.
LinkedIn Learning are more than a professional network and jobs platform- they are now global leaders in professional education with expertise in the business, creative and technology space.
Our Sister School content is being made available to Sisters alongside LinkedIn Learning’s world-class e-learning modules that can be curated to the specific needs of cohorts and individuals. The Global Sisters- LinkedIn Learning pilot is developing a model for learner engagement and enhancing the impact on business knowledge and applied skills.