The As­so­ci­a­tion of Caribbean States (ACS) in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Re­gion­al Port So­ci­ety of Carta­ge­na and the Min­istry of Com­merce, In­dus­try and Tourism of the Re­pub­lic of Colom­bia, with the sup­port of the Of­fice of Tourism and Cul­ture of the Or­gan­i­sa­tion of Amer­i­can States will host a re­gion­al work­shop on En­tre­pre­neur­ial Strength­en­ing in the Tourism Sec­tor: Op­por­tu­ni­ties for Women in Carta­ge­na de In­dias, Colom­bia from Oc­to­ber 23 - 24.

The work­shop is the first phase of a joint ini­tia­tive de­vel­oped by the ACS Di­rec­torates of Sus­tain­able Tourism and Trade De­vel­op­ment and Ex­ter­nal Eco­nom­ic Re­la­tions, to bridge the gaps in the con­tri­bu­tion of tourism to lo­cal economies as it re­lates to women's en­tre­pre­neur­ship and Small and Medi­um-Sized En­ter­pris­es (SME) De­vel­op­ment.

The work­shop is in­tend­ed to com­ple­ment ef­forts to en­hance the par­tic­i­pa­tion of women in the tourism sec­tor as ser­vice providers and raise aware­ness of their role and con­tri­bu­tion as en­tre­pre­neurs and in em­ploy­ment gen­er­a­tion. It will fa­cil­i­tate the dis­cus­sion of is­sues fac­ing women en­tre­pre­neurs who are small busi­ness own­ers op­er­at­ing in the tourism sec­tor, and pro­vide a plat­form for an analy­sis of best prac­tices and lessons learnt from suc­cess­ful women en­tre­pre­neurs.

A key cri­te­ria in this re­spect will be the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of lead­ing en­tre­pre­neurs and suc­cess sto­ries for fol­low-up ac­tiv­i­ties.

The re­gion­al work­shop and sym­po­sium will con­sist of four the­mat­ic ple­nary ses­sions by re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al ex­perts over the two day pe­ri­od. These will be fol­lowed by work­shops to al­low de­lib­er­a­tion on key top­ics. The ex­pect­ed out­come of this event is to iden­ti­fy the needs and chal­lenges of women en­tre­pre­neurs, to de­ter­mine ar­eas for fu­ture in­ter­ven­tions and to gar­ner sup­port for fu­ture na­tion­al and re­gion­al in­ter­ven­tions fo­cused on ca­pac­i­ty build­ing.

A dis­tin­guished pan­el of high-lev­el speak­ers and pre­sen­ters has been as­sem­bled for this work­shop, and in­cludes rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the In­ter­na­tion­al Labour Or­ga­ni­za­tion (ILO), In­ter­na­tion­al NGO 'Cre­ative Learn­ing- Aid to Ar­ti­sans (CL-ATA)' and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Almer�a in Spain, as well as rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the host coun­try's Min­istry of Tourism and the Carta­ge­na Port As­so­ci­a­tion.