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On August 15th, the Honourable Mary Ng, Minister of International Trade, Export Promotion, Small Business and Economic Development, announced that Women’s Enterprise Organizations of Canada (WEOC) will be providing loans of up to $50,000 to women entrepreneurs and business owners this fall through the Women Entrepreneurship Loan Fund.
Minister Ng highlighted that the Women Entrepreneurship Loan Fund is already supporting women across the country in starting up and growing their businesses, with a majority of the recipients being under-represented women. With WEOC set to distribute nearly $30 million in loans, the Government of Canada is ensuring that even more women can access capital to start or grow their businesses.
WEOC will deliver the Women Entrepreneurship Loan Fund through its regional loan fund partners. They will work with women entrepreneurs at every stage of the application process and deliver top-quality wraparound business support, including helping applicants with the development of viable business plans and providing advisory services, training and loan aftercare.
Currently, the loan fund partner in Ontario is PARO Centre for Women’s Enterprise. Applicants can engage with these loan fund partners to start preparing their business plan for the application process.
For more information on WEOC’s Loan Fund Program, visit https://weoc.ca/loan-program/.
The Women Entrepreneurship Loan Fund—a key part of the $6 billion Women Entrepreneurship Strategy—is allocating funding to not-for-profit organizations with existing loan programs to provide additional affordable financing to women entrepreneurs, particularly for start-ups, under-represented groups or sole proprietorships that experience more difficulty in accessing financing.
This milestone builds on the historic investments the government has made to support women since 2015—from integrating gender-based analysis into policy decisions and program development, legislating pay equity and enhancing the Canada Child Benefit to providing special funding to support women entrepreneurs during the pandemic and establishing agreements with the provinces and territories for $10-a-day daycare.
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