Good afternoon, Madam Chair and panellists.
I am very happy to be here today. I'm Rosalind Lockyer, founder and CEO of PARO Centre for Women’s Enterprise of Canada, which is a member of the Women's Enterprise Organizations of Canada—of which Heidi spoke earlier—and is a hub member for Women's Enterprise Knowledge Hub for Ontario. I really appreciate this opportunity to be a witness on your study for Canadian women in international trade.
Established in 1995, PARO Centre for Women’s Enterprise Canada is an award-winning organization that supports prosper circles. It's the largest women-centred peer lending network in North America.
PARO's area of expertise is supporting diverse businesswomen at all levels of business growth in urban, rural and remote communities of Canada. For 30 years, PARO has helped tens of thousands of women entrepreneurs to start, grow and scale.
As part of our strategy, PARO promotes the benefits of exporting, but we also provide training and funding. When we go on a trade mission with women to the United States, we provide pre-mission preparation, support during the mission, post-mission training and hands-on support. PARO provides continued encouragement and follow-up assistance, which is vital to sustained success.
Funded by FedNor and FedDev, which are regional development agencies in Ontario, PARO has supported over 55 women entrepreneurs on seven PARO trade missions in the United States. While providing funding, we have been able to put $200,000 directly into women's pockets to support their travel on these trade missions.
In addition, PARO provides additional funding through our prosper circles—which is our peer lending network—and our WEOC partnership, as Ontario's representative of the women's national loan fund. Both are funded under the women entrepreneurship strategy.
PARO's trade missions afford Canadian businesswomen an opportunity to grow and expand their businesses through exporting. Increasing trade in this way will help enhance Canada's overall productivity and economic growth, not only in Ontario but across Canada. We started in Ontario, so that's why so much of our support comes from Ontario. Through the women's entrepreneurship strategy, we have been able to spread our team across Canada and develop our peer lending circles, of which we have over 225 now across Canada. Again, that's with support from the government.
PARO's trade missions are really important. The potential for Canadian women-owned businesses to succeed in international markets by gaining access to supplier diversity programs is vital if they're going to move forward and build bigger businesses and increase the amount of exports and imports that we have in Canada.
The trade missions that we do are in the United States. The biggest vehicle of support that we use is WBENC. Those supplier diversity conferences have about 4,500 attendees, which includes the women entrepreneurs, but also the Fortune 500 corporations and the government agencies that support all of these entities.
To this end, I'd like to make a few recommendations to strengthen the potential for women businesses to export.
Number one, PARO can continue to build on the foundational work that we achieved during women's first trade mission experiences and can provide advanced support strategies for future development. However, to tap into these opportunities, there needs to be sufficient funding for the travel and accommodation, for the registration, for the certification and for the support persons—