Projects vary. They start at the most basic level of financial literacy skills to even those who have a small business. Especially in the immigrant community there are some significant projects that help those women. How do you run a small business from the very small level of business? We often talk about small and medium-sized enterprises. You hear of some with $500,000 a year in sales and up, but we're talking about the smallest business here. Those are the women that these projects are addressing.
Some of the other things we are doing are things like CATA WIT, which I mentioned, to ensure that we can see more women involved in technology, and in addition to that, there are some other really important projects.
I'm going to talk about WEConnect, because WEConnect is focusing on small businesswomen, and this is about market access.
I will be quick because I know you like me to talk a little less, Madam Chair.
When you're talking about a small businesswoman who has decided to create a food product in her home and she wants to put it on the grocery store shelf, if she wants to do that, it can cost $25,000 just to get one space for one item on the grocery store shelves. What the supplier diversity program does is waive those fees. You go through the knowledge, the training, and the mentoring and you become certified. Then you are entered into a database where the larger companies, the grocery stores, etc., the Campbell soups of the world, take a look at this database and commit to purchasing all of their new products, or 5% of them, from the businesses in this database. This is the project that we announced. I've asked and made it very specific that it's focused on those small businesswomen to give them the market access, to give them the chance to grow those small businesses out of their homes and into something a lot bigger than they are. That is significant when we look at the number of small businesses that are being created by women across the country. We know they are doing it at twice the rate that men are, and they're doing it for lots of reasons that I know we can each identify at this table at the drop of a hat. But that needs to be supported, and that's why our government is supporting this project.