The Accelerating Women's Enterprise Development Partnership (AWE) brought together a number of leading agencies in women's enterprise development, spanning the English regions. The overarching aim of the project was to develop a programme of activities and interventions, to ensure that mainstream business support was developed to meet the needs of excluded groups of women. Prowess, a DP partner, was a major contributor to the drawing up of the UK Department of Trade and Industry's National Strategic Framework for Women's Enterprise. Women’s business support services were developed in a strategic way at national level to meet the needs of existing and emerging women entrepreneurs leading to equal numbers of women and men starting up businesses.