Agent Of Change: Mandy Richards
As CEO and founder of social enterprise Global Sisters, Mandy Richards (below, centre) has helped thousands of women find their way to financial independence by establishing a micro business. She tells us why she is passionate about democratising entrepreneurship.
You founded Global Sisters eight years ago to help empower women economically. Who do you work with?
Our goal is to help women who face barriers that stop them accessing decent work: women with caring responsibilities, older women, women in regional areas, migrants and refugees, Indigenous women, women with disabilities or mental illness … the list goes on. By helping them launch a micro business, we want them to be able to control their lives from an economic perspective.
Our work has evolved over the years. The original concept was a cause-driven Etsy-style sales platform that was about supporting women. Then it became a one-stop shop to help women who are starting up a business. Now we’re really looking at it as a movement that is democratising entrepreneurship.
We have already supported more than 4500 women on their business journey but we haven’t really started scaling yet. Our five-year goal is to impact 42,000 women and see 17,000 new businesses get off the ground. On average, the women we support in turn support a household of four, and the ripple effect of that income generation is 112,000 people, 56,000 of whom are children.
What have you learnt about women and business along the way?
For many women, the micro-loans are actually the last piece of the puzzle they need. Women take a slow business approach. They’re risk averse, they move forward steadily in slow increments. The government and the media love to talk about unicorns, tech firms and fast-paced start-ups, but that’s not the type of business the majority of women are involved in. Women focus on creating a stable income stream – it might not be their whole income, but it can make all the difference to them.
Is your goal to have every woman run a thriving business?
The goal is economic independence, which can come in different ways. One thing we have seen happen many times, particularly with women of refugee backgrounds, is that they start a little business, have some success, and then they move into paid employment. They tell us that it’s because they’ve built up confidence through Global Sisters that they are able to gain employment.
What services do you offer?
We provide a long term, flexible suite of services and products which include business education, business coaching, sales and marketing support and microfinance. Our approach is to identify barriers and then knock them down. The biggest single barrier, without a doubt, is confidence. It’s a woman thing, that lack of self-belief. One part of our offering is one-on-one online meetings with a coach. Having someone help you get to the first few sales is really important. The program is flexible, so the next step will be specialised coaching in whatever you need help with. We’ve just had some women resurface who started with us three years ago, and that’s great. Many women have a lot of stuff going on in the background that they have to work around.
What ignited your passion for helping women?
I grew up as a country girl, on an Armidale [NSW] farm, and after my parents separated I saw my mum be a single mum and go through the welfare experience, trying to find a job with no network in a place where jobs simply weren’t available.
I lived in Indonesia for my primary school years where my eyes were opened to poverty. Later as an adult, I remember being on holiday in Vietnam, hiking around the mountains in Sapa. I saw hill tribe women carrying their babies and these intricate bags they had woven, which they were selling. They told me that they had to earn money because their husbands were at home doing nothing.
When I was at uni, my brother gave me a book about [Bangladeshi pioneer of microfinance] Muhammud Yunus and the idea completely lit up my brain. I was fascinated how it all came together. I started thinking, how can I support these women, how can I connect these women to markets?
I did work for social ventures in Australia, piloting start-ups, working between government and the corporate sector and not-for-profits, setting up businesses to create employment and I thought, there had to be a better way to do the same thing over and over.
What are your biggest challenges right now?
Global Sisters is looking at the bigger picture around structural change, which can support women to create their own income stream. Then we want to help them leverage that income by creating appropriate and accessible financial services. The end goal is to help Australian women on low incomes have their own assets, namely housing, to stop homelessness and generational poverty.
Working on changing welfare policy to support self-employment creation was always something we wanted to do, but we needed to get the organisation to a certain point in terms of experience and credibility with our work on the ground first. Now we’re at a stage where we can use all our experience and case studies to make it real.
On a personal level, I’ve just finished a masters degree in human rights law, which was pretty intense. I’d like to get a bit of life balance back – I want to try to get fit again … I used to run half-marathons.
Want more Tonic delivered free to your inbox? Subscribe here