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Coca-Cola’s 5by20 initiative backed 6 million women entrepreneurs
Coca-Cola’ s 5by20 initiative – which was launched in 2010 – surpassed its ambitious goal by reaching more than 6 million women entrepreneurs.
The decade-long initiative was meant to enable the economic empowerment of 5 million women entrepreneurs.
5by20 set out to help women entrepreneurs overcome social and economic barriers to business success—while creating thriving, sustainable communities. The vision was rooted in the belief that investing in women, who are pillars of their communities, creates a ripple effect of economic growth and sustainable change.
“By investing in women’s economic empowerment over the past decade, we have created shared value in hopes of a better shared future—enabling improved livelihoods for women, their families and their communities,” Chairman and CEO James Quincey wrote in the 2020 5by20 report.
According to a 2018 International Monetary Fund report, women’s economic empowerment boosts productivity, economic diversification, income equality and other positive outcomes.
“Above all, what we found through 5by20 is that when women have access to opportunity, there is no limit on what can be accomplished,” said Bea Perez, global chief communications, sustainability and strategic partnerships officer, The Coca-Cola Company.
“At first, 5by20 focused on women entrepreneurs across its global value –chain… women who own or manage small businesses we work with around the world. As the program evolved, we realized that women entrepreneurs were not the only ones facing barriers. There was a broader set of women who were potential entrepreneurs that then came into the program. We, therefore, worked with partners to drive scale and deeper impact. In 2013, we expanded the scope of 5by20 to allow for independent contributions by The Coca-Cola Foundation (the company’s independent philanthropic giving arm) and other partners to extend our reach to women who faced barriers and were conducting businesses outside the Coca-Cola value chain. Beneficiaries of programs funded by The Coca-Cola Foundation have no link to our value chain.”
“Additionally, we recognized that harnessing the power of technology would play a major role in rapidly and flexibly scaling our programs, while ensuring effective delivery during the height of the pandemic season, by giving women access to digital programming from their homes. Digital resources have been available through 5by20 for a few years now, but their use accelerated in 2020 when countries like the United States, Ukraine and the Philippines were able to scale their programs through virtual digital training offerings.”
“It focused initially on four countries; Brazil, India, South Africa and the Philippines. One of the biggest opportunities we identified was in Africa, where we worked through an innovative distribution program in East Africa, referred to as the Manual/Micro Distribution Center (MDC). These MDCs served as a foundational catalyst for 5by20 by showing us a model that played a social development role while at the same time benefited our core business operations, and were financed solely through business funding. This model also engaged several women entrepreneurs. From research, we established that at least 86% of these outlets, which served as hubs to distribute our beverages to other small retail customers, were owned and/or operated by women. We identified an opportunity to start there and then scale up. We saw similar opportunities in Latin America and Asia. As of the end of 2020, our total 5by20 programs expanded to more than 300 programs in 100 countries. “
“While we are pleased that we have achieved our decade-long goal, women’s economic empowerment continues to be a major global challenge and core priority for The Coca-Cola system, both internally and externally. Internally, our goal is to mirror the diversity of the communities in which we operate. We recently reconfirmed our 2030 goal to be 50% led by women. Our external efforts will focus on supporting community resilience and as the impact of our continuing efforts multiplies with each passing year, we expect to reach many more women and underprivileged populations around the world.”
We surpassed our #5by20 goal to enable the economic empowerment of 5M women entrepreneurs. Working with our partners, we provided more than 6M women with access to business skills training, mentoring and financial services or assets. Learn more: https://t.co/Gr0G4RNBVf #IWD2021 pic.twitter.com/Jre2PlgeCH
— The Coca-Cola Co. (@CocaColaCo) March 8, 2021
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