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Ivanka Trump's women empowerment project slammed by GAO, Internet says it's her 'get rich quick initiative'

While Ivanka spent years claiming that she was tracking the spending and efficient use of the funds during her tenure at the White House, she clearly wasn't doing a very good job of it

When Ivanka Trump served as the senior adviser to former president Donald Trump, she had helped grow a project for global women's empowerment that used US Agency for International Development (USAID) to help women living in extreme poverty across the world. However, a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report recently found that the initiative launched by Ivanka did not adequately track funds and couldn’t even determine what was a woman-owned business.

According to Politico, Women's Global Development and Prosperity Initiative at global conferences became part of the Women's Entrepreneurship and Economic Empowerment Act of 2018 at the US Agency for International Development. While the goal of the program was a "cohesive program 'enabling us to rigorously track the execution and the efficacy of the money that we are spending,'" the GAO's 14-month audit "demonstrates that, at least at USAID, the opposite was happening."

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At least 19 new women's empowerment programs were launched in 2019 as part of the program, but Politico explained that "there were extensive failures in both the targeting of the money, and the measurement of its impact."

The report states, “USAID has not developed a process to support compliance with statutory requirements to target MSME resources to activities that reach the very poor and to small and medium-sized enterprise resources to activities that reach enterprises owned, managed, and controlled by women. We identified three key gaps that impair USAID’s ability to develop such a process. First, USAID has not identified the total funding subject to the targeting requirements. Second, although USAID has programs designed to help the very poor, it is unable to determine the amount of funding that reaches this group. Third, although USAID has MSME activities that benefit women, it has not defined enterprises owned, managed, and controlled by women and does not collect data by enterprise size.”

A former Trump official tried to blame former president Barack Obama, claiming that when Trump's team took office, "Everything was scattered with no real clear goal or purpose. That is not a good use of taxpayer dollars and doesn't help people anywhere."

"Ivanka Trump and her team spent two years developing the broader W-GDP program, which they say helped 12.6 million people in 2019 alone," they claimed. 

Meanwhile, while Ivanka spent years claiming that she was tracking the spending and efficient use of the funds during her tenure at the White House, she clearly wasn't doing a very good job of it. As soon as the GAO report came to light, Ivanka was heavily mocked on Twitter with many claiming that it was not shocking that she would be involved in a sham. Others were sure that scheme only empowered the woman it was built for - Ivanka herself. 

"I’m shocked that Ivanka Trump’s 'Women Empowerment Initiative' only empowered one woman (her). I really thought it was going to be a difference maker that inspired other women to start their own global sweatshop ring," one social media user tweeted while another one quipped, "Ivanka Trump, You will never be president." A third read, "So Ivanka Trump turned out to be a sham. Well I"ll be darned!! LMAO" One more commented, "Ivanka Trump’s women’s initiative was really Ivanka Trump’s get rich quick initiative. Government auditors found. Who is really surprised?"

The next said, "You will find this very unshocking." Another commented, "Ivanka Trump is the epitome of the privileged rich shitting on the poor and not giving one fuck." One more remarked, "Ivanka Trump is definitely a nasty woman and grifter." A commenter tweeted, "It was only ever about empowering one woman - Ivanka Trump." Another said, "Guess they didn't cover how not to launch sham initiatives in the how not to run fraud charities class New York state required admitted fraud charity co-runner Ivanka Trump to take" A person reacted with, "But of course we knew this because, hey, it's Ivanka Trump."

These remarks were made by the Internet and individual organizations, MEAWW cannot confirm them independently and nor does it support these claims being made on the Internet.