A seat at the Foundher’s Circle

Former St Mary’s School Waverley learners’ entrepreneurship club encourages more women to see entrepreneurship as a viable career.
Keitumetse Pule founded the Foundher’s Circle, a network of early-stage women entrepreneurs and business owners on International Women’s Day in March this year.

The network provides the entrepreneurs with the necessary support and resources to grow their businesses while connecting them with other women who are doing the same. Essentially, the network was created to advance gender equality in entrepreneurship by helping women to access resources that they statistically struggle to access.

Pule said that she had an idea to start an entrepreneurship club to get more girls to see entrepreneurship as a viable career in her Grade 11 year back in 2016.

“In 2020, I got the opportunity to make policy recommendations to the G20 pertaining to young women’s economic participation and I was able to engage world leaders, such as the former prime minister of Portugal José Manuel Barroso and the chair of the Women 20 (W20) Dr Thoraya Obaid at the Reykjavík Global Forum regarding similar themes. These opportunities opened my eyes to how much further we still have to go in terms of advancing gender equality, especially in entrepreneurship, hence I started the network,” said Pule.

The Foundher’s Circle currently has 35 members and aims to assist more early-stage women entrepreneurs with practical resources and support to grow their businesses through their services, as well as their partnerships with relevant stakeholders. One of the ways in which the network assists women-founded businesses is by providing tools to make them digitally accessible through web design and social media management, owing to the acceleration of digitalisation by Covid-19.

Pule told the Rosebank Killarney Gazette that the network has an array of businesses in the network, such as scrubs manufacturing, cosmetics, crop production, tutoring, house sitting, safety tech and software development.

“In addition, we have a closed group chat where the women entrepreneurs in the network can share useful business resources as well as share their victories and struggles in their entrepreneurial journeys.

“We are also focused on helping women-founded businesses to have more visibility, hence, I am seeking interview opportunities.”

For more information about the Foundher’s Circle, contact Keitumetse Pule via email at hello@foundherscircle.com

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