News

CAWEE Held its 2016 General Assembly Meeting

The 2016 General Assembly meeting of the Center for Accelerated Women’s Economic Empowerment (CAWEE) took place on July 4, 2017, in the presence of all CAWEE members and concerned government officials at Mosaic Hotel.

The Executive Director of CAWEE thanked all the members for being present and forwarded her welcome message. Mrs. Nigest made a remarks mentioning that 2016 was an exciting year where CAWEE made several key decisions which required time consuming commitments from CAWEE as well as from all CAWEE members and thanked all members for their contributions and unreserved support during the past year.

Mrs. Nigest presented the annual report for 2016 highlighting the major projects implemented during 2016, where the first major project accomplished was the project of the Office of the First Lady of the Federal Democratic republic of Ethiopia (FDRE) “Connecting 1,500 Women and Young Girls to the Export Market “. In this project 172 young women have been given marketable skills and were able to get connected to the market during 2016. Market Linkages have been also facilitated locally and abroad. On the market linkage locally, CAWEE members took part on different conferences and were able to showcase and promote their products and on the market linkage facilitated abroad some of the members participated in a trade mission organized to Sweden and Finland, where women exporters involved in the sectors coffee, hand-woven product/textiles, leather and service sectors took part.
The second project implemented was the joint project with International Trade Center (ITC), with a target on Textiles/Garment and Leather and the major activity accomplished was the provision of training for 40 Women Business Enterprises (WBEs), provision of business counseling services to 12 WBEs and the production of product catalogues for 40 WBEs..

The third accomplished project was website development for CAWEE members where the websites of 24 companies’ involved different sectors were built.

The last project accomplished was the celebration of the Third International Women Entrepreneurs Day, which was implemented in collaboration with Partnership for Change (PfC) Norway. In the celebration of the 3rd International Women’s Entrepreneurs Day CAWEE organized a cupping to compete event at Gelani Coffee, Moplaco Premises. The cupping competition involved nine contestants who were all women in Green Coffee.

Mrs. Nigest in finalizing her presentation, thanked all who closely worked with CAWEE during the past year’s implementation, the past Board members of CAWEE and CAWEE members who were actively engaged in the successful achievements recorded in 2016. Ms. Menbere Leul, Owner and Manager of Menbere Leul & Co. Chartered and Certified Accountants, presented CAWEE’s annual audited financial report. She presented the findings and the major highlights of the 2016 audit report, underlining that, the financial statement gives a true and fair view of the financial position of CAWEE as of December 2016 and its financial performance for the year then ended in accordance with International Reporting Standards for Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (IFRS for SMEs).

The agenda on CAWEE’s Constitution was also presented to the members, where the draft document was sent earlier to all the members of CAWEE. The constitution was approved by all the members that were present in the meeting.

Following the approval of CAWEE’s constitution, was election of CAWEE’s new Board members. In this agenda, each of the five sectors nominated their potential representatives and finally the following were elected as Board members of CAWEE:

  • Wr/o Dehab Mesfin (Representing the Coffee sector);
  • Wr/o Sara Mohamed (Representing the Textiles/Garment/Hand-weaving sector);
  • Wr/o Asegedech Woldemarim (Representing the Gemstones & Jewellery sector);
  • Wr/t Meron Seid (Representing the Leather sector) and
  • Wr/o Arsema Yigrem (Representing the Services sector).

As adopted by the General Assembly members, the terms for the Board is agreed to be for four (4) years.


Finally, was time where members were sharing their experiences and discussed on how best each one of them work in partnership.

The 2016 CAWEE’s General Assembly meeting was concluded with a special program which was prepared to acknowledge Ms. Akiko Seoym’s celebration, in being recognized as a renowned accomplished Female Entrepreneur, on Forbes being among the top five Ethiopian Multi-milliners, and for being a prominent figure among others to build a multi-million and billion dollar empire in construction industry.