Formal employment opportunities are insufficient for the demand of the Egyptian labor markets. Thus, many young individuals, especially females, are pushed into self-employment when they leave school although they have never had access to business development training. Current educational systems do not prepare young individuals properly for productive self-employment. Once a young person has left school, transferring entrepreneurial attitudes and skills into practice is a challenge. And that is why start-up businesses fail or stay in the informal economy where there is limited opportunity for businesses to create growth and employment.
Here, a pilot study was conducted at the Home Economics Department, Women Faculty for Art, Science, and Education at the University of Ain Shams (UAS), Cairo, Egypt. In this study, an innovative training program was designed to support emerging and existing female entrepreneurs to succeed in their business ventures in the field of clothing and textile. This training program was delivered in two stages, a "Train the trainers" stage and a "Start- a-business"stage. In the first stage, a group of ambitious university students, with background in clothing and textile, were trained to teach entrepreneurship principles besides clothes manufacturing and marketing courses, to prepare them as trainers for the target groups (Abdel-Hamed, 2014). In the second stage, trainers from the first stage conducted the training for target groups including, female university graduates with different backgrounds and single mothers with limited education, both with family responsibilities and low income. Through this training program, the target groups learned clothing technology skills as well as business initiation and practical management skills.Furthermore, after training consultation was offered to all participants to help them start and run their own business successfully. This training program was operated by UAS staff and offered tofemale entrepreneurs at no cost.