New hub opens in Salford, targeting female entrepreneurs

A project which supports entrepreneurial women who don’t speak English as their first language is opening the doors of its new Salford office today, coinciding with International Women’s Day.

The Women with Wings project, founded by Little Hulton resident Jasmin Bakhre, 47, is celebrating its second anniversary, having already supported 15 local women to launch their own businesses.

Mother-of-three Jasmin is a City West Housing Trust tenant and came up with the idea after recognising how many mums have great ideas and skills, but lack confidence and face other barriers like child care.

Women with Wings was established in 2017 with support from City West Housing Trust’s Don’t Keep it Under Your Hat Programme, which helps people turn business ideas into reality.

Jasmin is marking this year’s International Women’s Day in the most fitting way, by opening a dedicated office for Women with Wings in the shopping precinct in Little Hulton.

It will provide a hub for the project and a business address for new enterprises just starting out.

Jasmin, who has lived in Little Hulton for the past four years, said: “Through our work with the local community we found that there were a number of mums who weren’t engaging with enterprise support programmes, not because they didn’t have great ideas, but because they weren’t confident in how to develop them or how to engage with organisations that could help support them because of language barriers.

“We set up Women with Wings to create a support network to help mums understand how they could take their business ideas to the next level.

“We want to help women better their lives and give them training to increase their confidence so that they are ready to take on challenges and new opportunities.”

Earlier this week a report by accountants PwC showed that the North West is falling behind other regions as the UK continues to make gradual progress in the representation and welfare of women in the world of work.

The PwC Women in Work Index claimed that, while the UK has improved across all five indicators of female economic empowerment to reach 13th place this year, up one place from 14th last year, progress has not been evenly spread across the regions.

The bottom three places on the Index are occupied by Yorkshire & Humber, East Midlands and the West Midlands, while the North West has fallen by two ranking places since 2010, despite making slight progress in the female unemployment, female full time employment, gap in male/female labour force and gender pay gap rates.

However, there was a fall in the female labour force.

Meanwhile, among a series of events across the North West to mark International Women’s Day, two of the most high profile businesswomen in the region are giving their insight into how women can smash through the glass ceiling and fulfill their workplace potential.

Sue Grindrod

Marnie Millard, chief executive of Newton-le-Willows-based soft drink firm, and Vimto maker, Nichols, and Sue Grindrod, chief executive of Liverpool tourism, cultural and residential hot-spot the Royal Albert Dock, are aiming to inspire others to follow in their footsteps in an event at Liverpool social enterprise The Women’s Organisation.

Their business club has teamed up with NatWest Bank to stage the event on the theme of ‘Women can …’.

Sue Grindrod said: “I believe that we must provide support for our peers and our teams, epecially when they are facing huge challenges.

“Helping others to learn and grow through the process means that we all gain something.”