She Matters is a social enterprise based in Rotterdam, the international city also known as ‘The Gateway to the World.’

She Matters was founded by Christina Moreno, an international lawyer who overcame poverty as a teenage mother, and whose life mission is to empower refugee and migrant women to take control of their lives. We work hand in hand with a team of HR professionals, labour market consultants, and other experts who are experienced in analysing trends in shortages in labour and skills.

She Matters is supported by an Executive Board consisting of Christina Moreno (Chair) and Radha Friedman – former Programme Director with the World Justice Project who has over two decades’ experience working to help women and girls get the rights and resources they need to thrive. The team can be found here. Our Supervisory Board draws from various areas of expertise and provides general supervision and advice to the Executive Board.

She Matters offers female newcomers both training, with a special focus on soft skills, and placement into jobs that fit their education and work experience. Market research indicates that there are a number of training and placement services in the form of educational institutions or in-house company training and recruitment agencies. These organisations tend to focus either on non-migrant unemployed people or on a specific niche within the migrant population. The training and placement services designed by She Matters are tailor-made to answer to the specific needs and challenges faced by unemployed female newcomers and skills and labour shortages in businesses.

Through our programme, businesses in the city are better able to fill skills and labour gaps by expanding their employee pool to include skills offered by female newcomers, leading to greater efficiency and increased productivity in the company. The city will benefit in that it will reap the rewards of greater economic impact, increased integration and access to jobs for female newcomers which will also reduce the cost that migrants could potentially bare on the welfare system. Similarly, female newcomers themselves will be more active participants in their host communities and contribute to the economic and societal wellbeing of the city.

Capitalising on years of experience in working with the corporate sector and government, She Matters has developed an innovative approach to answer the challenges of Sustainable Development Goal 5: Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment. Through our gender-specific approach, we work with qualified trainers for the training of unemployed female newcomers in skills to then place them into jobs at companies that fit their education and work experience. This solution of working with businesses and female newcomers will help alleviate the challenges they face and release the untapped potential for our economy.