10.8 Government adopted a Broad Based Women’s Economic Empowerment Approach. The approach provides a systematic way of mainstreaming women in key economic sectors through establishment of empowerment targets, mobilisation of financial resources and capacity building for women’s effective economic participation. The framework is designed to serve women from all backgrounds and to be applied across all sectors, hence broadbased. 10.9 A women’s Development Fund was established in 2010 as a means of addressing the lack of collateral amongst women and the high interest rates being charged by banks. To date $2 887 991.00 has been disbursed to 1 854 women’s groups. The projects funded were from the following sectors: mining, cropping, bakeries, goat rearing, indigenous chickens, agro-dealership, honey production processing, garment making, leather products, crafts, beneficiation, cattle buying and selling, and fruit vending. Nine vehicles were purchased for the purposes of monitoring and evaluating projects funded. 10.10 Government established a Women’s Bank. The objectives of the Women’s Bank are to improve access to affordable capital and operational finance by women. Further the bank facilitates the inclusion of the majority of women who reside in remote areas of the country who are not formally employed. Mechanisms to assist and promote entrepreneurship 10.11 The Government of Zimbabwe recognises the importance of promoting entrepreneurship as the majority of Zimbabweans are in the informal sector. Government has put in place a number of financial windows to promote entrepreneurship and facilitate Page | 94