Angel investors help UAE’s women entrepreneurs spread their wings

thenational.ae - Elissa Freiha, an Emirati of Lebanese descent, and Chantalle Dumonceaux, a Canadian-American, are the founders of the Dubai-based women’s angel investment platform Womena. The pair met as students at the American University of Paris in 2008 and after graduation, both showed an interest in angel investing: Ms Dumonceaux, 27, joined Gust, a New York-based platform which manages group venture capital deal flow, and Ms Freiha, 26, became an active angel investor. In 2013, the women moved to the UAE together to set up their own manager-led investment platform. In total Womena has invested US$462,000 into companies in the UAE, most recently joining fund-raising rounds for comparison site Souqalmal and online insurance platform Bayzat. Elissa Freiha (EF): When looking at the global start-up environment, Silicon Valley is the main one but it’s very saturated, and Europe tends to be very traditional. The UAE has a lot of dynamics that made it an ideal breeding ground for early stage angel investment. There’s a lot of funding here that’s not yet stimulated, and most importantly, Dubai has this insatiable desire to innovate and grow bigger, despite all of the challenges that we go through in this region.

UAE charity supports Ugandan restaurant to empower women entrepreneurs

Education and support of young people are some of the biggest factors in helping girls and all children around the world—leading to better opportunities and pay, a cycle of education as they send their children to school, prosperous communities and more. So we were thrilled to learn of this team up between Malayaka House Orphanage in Uganda and Abu Dhabi-based Monyati Initiatives, a philanthropic organization providing funds, to renovate a pizza restaurant central to the orphanage's mission. In a country already facing high unemployment, girls and orphans are even more at risk. Through this program, older girls learn skills like managing money, helping to run a business and cheesemaking, while the restaurant raises funds for the orphanage. The restaurant and training center are both run by women. The project supported by Monyati Initiatives will allow for a renovation of the restaurant, making it even more beneficial and cost effective.

thenational.ae - DUBAI / Orphans in Uganda have been given the chance of a brighter future thanks to a UAE-inspired pioneering project that also aims to empower female entrepreneurs.

Abu Dhabi-based philanthropic organisation Monyati Initiatives has funded a Dh91,825 project to renovate and upgrade a pizza restaurant in Entebbe that, it hoped, would become a sustainable business.

Working with Malayaka House Orphanage, Monyati Initiatives believes the restaurant will provide an environment for the girls to learn.

“This has been a dream come true, and our girls could not be happier,” said Monja Wolf, Abu Dhabi resident and founder of Monyati Initiatives. “Everything has become easier for them.”

Although the restaurant was already being used by the orphanage as a means of raising money, the changes meant they could expand their activities.

“The primary goal of this project was to take the pizza business and do what the orphanage has already been doing for a number of years – but do it better, cheaper and faster,” she said.

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