GREAT Women Project — Gender Responsive Economic Actions for the Transformation of Women, Philippines (2006–2022)

The GREAT Women Project began in 2006 as a bilateral partnership between the Philippine Commission on Women (PCW), the country's central gender-equality policy body, and Global Affairs Canada, aiming to advance women's economic empowerment in the Philippines.

Phase 1 (November 2006–February 2014, a CAN$6,026,657 Canadian contribution) built government capacity for gender-responsive economic policy and worked through 204 women micro-entrepreneur groups across 45 local government units, partnering with the private sector to help women access higher-value markets. Phase 2, ‘Supporting Women's Economic Empowerment in the Philippines’ (2015–2022, roughly PhP 335 million, extended 1.5 years for COVID-19), shifted to direct enterprise-level assistance — business registration, market development, product and technology upgrading, and management training — delivered through the Department of Trade and Industry, Department of Agriculture and Department of Science and Technology across nine priority regions.

Phase 1 assisted 13,780 women micro-entrepreneurs, generated CAN$125,000 in additional sales in its final two years, and formalised registration for 1,021 of those businesses (7%). Phase 2 engaged 831 targeted women entrepreneurs and reached 821 (98.8%); 486 (58.5%) recorded sales increases of at least 30%, 578 (69.6%) recorded increased assets, and 650 (78.2%) expanded into institutional-buyer markets. A Department of Trade and Industry project page states a mid-project evaluation was conducted in 2019 using a Results-Based Management framework, though the full evaluation report could not be independently located.

These figures are corroborated across three independent sources — the Canadian government's proactive-disclosure project browser, PCW's own results reporting, and Manila Bulletin newspaper coverage — but the evidence base is best described as well-documented activity and output data with partial third-party corroboration, rather than an independently verified impact evaluation with a counterfactual comparison group.