Solidary Women:

female collective entrepreneurship

Abstract

This paper reports the experience of carrying out an extension project whose objective was to make a critical evaluation and monitoring of results of the Women Solidarity Program aiming at the elaboration of methodology to be replicated. This program was conceived as a collaborative model adopting the strategy of promoting collective entrepreneurship and network formation, aiming to support women with an interest in undertaking collaboratively and contributing to the protagonism and income generation of a population in situations of social vulnerability. The need to evaluate the program's impact arose as an opportunity to connect a demand from the community and the program's creators to academic research on the themes of reducing inequalities, entrepreneurship, and social management. The methodological procedures used were document analysis, in-depth interviews, questionnaires, criteria for defining the control group and indicators based on the SDGs, generating data for the construction of the Logical Framework and the Theory of Change. The research results and the evaluation model were discussed and shared with the program partners, with emphasis on the methodology to be replicated. A public event was held with all partners and two academic papers were presented at seminars.