Pounding the pavement
P.E.I. association hit the road to hear from women entrepreneurs

HANNAH BELL and the P.E.I. Business Women’s Association did their best rock band impersonation in 2015, going on tour across the gentle island.

Dubbed the “The Great PEIBWA Road Trip,” the Association spent the summer visiting communities to get feedback from women involved in business. “We’re a provincial organization based in Charlottetown and it’s easy to sit at your desk,” says Bell, the Association’s executive director. “But when you’re standing on their doorstep and having a conversation, that’s when they will tell you how they feel.”

Every Monday from late June until the end of August, Bell and Association staff held gatherings (nine in total) in different areas throughout the province. The meetings served to inform businesswomen about the services the Association can provide for them– like the formal mentoring program it launched this year. It also allowed the Association to hear about the challenges P.E.I. women are facing running their businesses.

Two of the challenges that came up often during the visits included the lack of recognition on the value of small businesses, many of them run by women, to the P.E.I. economy and the lack of government support being provided to small service and product-based businesses compared to the information technology and bioscience sectors.

Solving these challenges isn’t easy, but thanks to the road trip, the Association knows what concerns its membership and can work on ways to address them. “Being in business is really hard,” Bell says. “We’re looking at ways to support women and help their businesses grow.”