Conclusion

#SheFUND does considerably more than provide capital.

This study set out to understand how participating in #SheDIDIT's loan selection and coaching process shapes migrant women entrepreneurs' skills, confidence, and perceived legitimacy in Belgium. The answer is clear, and it is more interesting and more nuanced than a simple financial impact story.

#SheFUND does what it sets out to do: it provides interest free capital to migrant women entrepreneurs who cannot access conventional financing. It enables specific, time sensitive investments that advance the trajectory of real businesses. The women who received #SheFUND loans in this study are growing, expanding, and building. But #SheFUND does considerably more than provide capital. It builds capabilities through coaching and application preparation. It provides a structured and institutionalised site for entrepreneurial identity development. It confers legitimacy through a credible and transparent selection process. And it connects participants to a community that understands, in a full and intersectional sense, what they are trying to do and who they are.

The most significant finding of this study is that these non financial effects operate across the full applicant pool, not only among those who receive funding. This has a direct and actionable implication for program design: the quality of the process matters as much as the quality of the financial product. The experience of not funded applicants deserves as much deliberate attention as the experience of funded ones. And the success metrics of the program should reflect the full scope of its impact, not the narrow subset that current frameworks are equipped to count.

Belgium's entrepreneurial ecosystem does not yet reflect the diversity of its population. One in three Belgians has a migration background. A fraction of that proportion is visible in business ownership, investment networks, or entrepreneurial support ecosystems. #SheDIDIT was founded precisely to close this gap, not by treating migration background as a disadvantage to be managed, but by treating it as an asset waiting to be unlocked. The evidence from this study suggests strongly that the model is working. The task now is to scale it, fund it adequately, refine it where the evidence shows gaps, and hold it to its own high standards.

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