The Coca-Cola Company and UN Women form a Global Partnership to Accelerate Women’s Economic Empowerment

The Coca-Cola Company and UN Women announced a partnership to promote women’s economic empowerment. Responding to both UN Women’s Strategic Plan and The Coca-Cola Company’s global 5 BY 20 initiative, this partnership aims to enable the empowerment of women entrepreneurs by building upon the strengths of both organizations.

The Coca-Cola initiative seeks to enable the economic empowerment of 5 million women entrepreneurs across the Coca-Cola value chain by 2020. Specifically, the Company is developing and implementing programs to help break down barriers for women entrepreneurs in the small businesses that The Coca-Cola System touches.

The UN Women’s Strategic Plan lays out a range of initiatives that it will support, from promoting laws and policies that provide women protection and equal rights, to employment, income-generating opportunities and access to economic resources. UN Women is also encouraging companies to sign the Women’s Empowerment Principle – Equality Means Business, a set of measures geared to promote women’s empowerment in the workplace and marketplace.

Through this collaboration, The Coca-Cola Company and UN Women plan to address the barriers women entrepreneurs commonly face by providing increased access to business skills training, financial services and support networks of peers and mentors.

Work is already underway at the country level to identify potential programmes in areas such as business skills training programs for women-owned recycling cooperatives and women-run shops. Each organization will bring their expertise and capacity to the table through concrete on-the-ground programmes. This approach capitalizes on the comparative advantages of each, creating a public-private partnership to leverage and offer transformational opportunities for investment in women’s economic opportunity.