Get up and go with PARO!(Brief Article)

• Author: Faye, Donna

It's time for businesswomen in Northern Ontario to "get up and go."

This year's PARO conference in Thunder Bay focused on preparing women to export their businesses.

PARO, a northwestern Ontario women's community loan fund, is an incorporated non-profit organization whose man date is to decrease poverty and increase economic independence and self-sufficiency in women by supporting micro enterprise.

The conference, which took place May 24 to May 26, educated women on information technology covering such topics as e-commerce application, Web page set up and electronic service utilization like electronic parcel services through Canada Post.

This year's keynote speaker was Sandra Yancey, CEO and founder of eWoman Network.com, an international women's network connected through the World Wide Web. The net work shares the philosophy of PARO - creating collaborative alliances and using the Internet to increase business, says Rosalind Lockyer, director of PARO. Yancey has been a consultant to Fortune 500 companies such as The Wall Street Journal, AT&T, Coca-Cola, NCR and Levi Strauss.

She is also the author of a soon-to-be published book, The Networking eWoman: Create your own World Wide Web.

Last fall, PARO enabled a group of eight women from Northern Ontario to attend the 2000 Business Women's Leaders' Summit in Washington, D.C. When they returned from Washington, the group expressed a need for a local conference to inform women in the North about opportunities in the global market. They noted the conference should provide a better grasp of technology, an opportunity to share each other's experiences, and networking for future collaboration, says Lockyer.

Terri Hakala, owner of Kakabeka Falls Gifts and...