Herramientas creadoras de entornos seguros SOUL (Sisterhood Our Unbroken Love)

Abstract

The entrepreneurship Tools for creating safe environments [Herramientas creadoras de entornos seguros] SOUL (Sisterhood Our Unbroken Love) is a comprehensive training program that seeks to promote sisterhood through the identification, prevention, mitigation, and elimination of gender related violence. The business model of the program will be based on the concept of social entrepreneurship and the theoretical framework of shared value. SOUL seeks to empower women to be able to identify the different gender-based violence to which they may be unknowingly exposed in the environments associated with their life projects; therefore, the program consists of a training module for the identification of violence and a physical training plan with non-lethal self-defense techniques, easy to apply in real situations of violence, promoting the physical, mental, and emotional empowerment of women. As an added value to the program, legal guidance on gender and income generation is offered to the participating women. SOUL has two customer segments: the first, the client users, which is focused on women from Bogotá with the economic capacity to acquire this program, regardless of their locality of residence; and the second, oriented to the client beneficiaries, which will initially be concentrated in the female population of the town of Kennedy. The program is the means through which it seeks to raise awareness among women users about the importance of strengthening sisterhood, defined by the Royal Spanish Academy (2021) as the “relationship of solidarity between women, especially in the fight for their empowerment”, through the model of grants for women victims of gender-based violence who do not have the economic resources to access programs of this nature. In order to strengthen the financial muscle of the program, its implementation will initially focus only on female users, in order to have the economic capacity to cover the costs associated with the women beneficiaries in a projection of six months after its execution. The segmentation carried out for the development of the program was made according to the two types of audiences to be impacted. For the first segment, users, the market corresponds to 1’394.305 women, data obtained through the analysis of the number of women of productive age in Bogota and the employment rate of women in the city; as a market to capture, 1275 women are projected in the first year of program implementation, which represents a participation of 0,09 % of the market. On the other hand, for the beneficiaries, the market corresponds to 359.143 women of the locality of Kennedy who are of productive age; in this way, 540 women are projected to be impacted, considering that the social factor will be implemented from the seventh month in the first year, which corresponds to a participation of 0,15 %. Through the development of the market research, it became evident that gender violence has been present throughout history, which has led women to face different forms of social inequity and inequality; unfortunately, on many occasions this problem continues to be invisibilized. This has led to a very low perception of safety among women in Bogotá: because of the dangers to which they are exposed, they are afraid to go out alone on the street, especially at night. This is one of the reasons why we believe SOUL will have a rapid acceptance in the market. On the other hand, it is important to consider that during the last few years the motivation for physical activity has increased in Colombia. This is due, among other things, to the benefits that can be obtained in health and in the feeling of greater well-being. In this context, generating spaces in which to increase the practice of exercise, regardless of the age or physical condition of the participants, helps to improve the quality of life of those involved and to offer an alternative that allows them to defend themselves, if necessary. For the start of operation of the SOUL program, we sought to minimize costs, since it is a venture with a significant social component. For this reason, an initial capital of COP 36’391.250 [USD 9500, approx.], attributed to fixed and operating costs, is required. SOUL’s financial planning will be sought through investors willing to participate in the project, according to the profitability shown for the first three years of operation.