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IFC, a member of the World Bank Group, will manage the Women’s Finance Hub, an initiative launched this week by the Group of 20’s Global Partnership on Financial Inclusion to improve access to financial services for women entrepreneurs and promote the sharing of knowledge and best practices.

Financial services can help the poor save for the future, start and grow their businesses and create prosperity for their families and communities. But 2.5 billion people – 1.35 billion of them women– still don’t have access to financial services. The World Bank Group, along with the G20 under Russia’s Presidency, is working to expand financial inclusion so that the unbanked get the chance to transform their lives.

Thunderbird MBA students mentor women entrepreneurs in Peru through Proyecto Salta, a one-year-old program that will give business training to 100,000 micro-entrepreneurs by 2014. Partners include Thunderbird School of Global Management, Mibanco, Australian Agency for International Development, and the Multilateral Investment Fund of Inter-American Development Bank.

Addressing longer-term challenges such as gender diversity is key to economic development and growth. In the community, the Bank's focus is on supporting financial empowerment.

Combining research, projects and advocacy, the Mobile Technology Programme aims to create sustainable economic opportunities for women entrepreneurs through the use of mobile phones and services.The programme works with a wide range of partners in the mobile ecosystem – including mobile operators, device manufacturers, platform providers and vendors, leading academic thinkers, consulting firms and non-profit organisations. Broadly, our work falls under two categories:

Working in partnership with local organisations, the Foundation develops programmes that build confidence, capability and capital in women. Given that women tend to invest 90% of their income back into their families, investing in women isn’t just good ethics, it’s sound economics.

Sheryl WuDunn believes giving women loans and educating girls is the way to lift developing nations out of poverty. 

The Cartier Women's Initiative Awards are an international business plan competition created in 2006 by Cartier, the Women's Forum, McKinsey & Company and INSEAD business school to identify, support and encourage projects by women entrepreneurs.