In order to expand the women’s empowerment initiative “SheMeansBusiness” to promote financial inclusion in Pakistani female-led companies, Facebook is launching a new component of the program called “Business Resilience through Financial Education (BRFE)”.

The purpose of the plan is to improve financial management skills to enhance the resilience and sustainability of Pakistani female-led small businesses and media (SMEs). The plan will be implemented in cooperation with the National Bank and the Small and Medium-sized Enterprise Activities (SMEA) of the U.S. Agency for International Development.

The BRFE initiative was initiated by Lesslie Viguerie, the Chargé d’affaires of the US Embassy in Islamabad, and Ms. Sima Kamil, Deputy Governor of the National Bank of Pakistan in the official virtual event.

Several senior government officials and representatives from Facebook, the Chamber of Commerce, the United States Agency for International Development, the Department of Commerce, and the Pakistan Poverty Alleviation Fund (PPAF) attended the event.

Beth Ann Lim of SheMeansBusiness explained that the program is being carried out in 21 countries/regions around the world, including Pakistan. Facebook and its partners have trained more than 1 million women around the world to master digital skills.

Beth An Lim said: “Financial knowledge is critical to the sustainability of women-led companies in Pakistan and elsewhere. SheMeansBusiness reflects Facebook’s long-term commitment to supporting women’s economic development in the Asia-Pacific region, with a focus on women Leading corporate sustainability.”

Facebook and SMEA have piloted BRFE and implemented the SheMeansBusiness program in Pakistan since May 2020 to improve the digital marketing and financial knowledge and skills of female entrepreneurs across the country.

Sima Kamil praised the efforts made by Facebook and other organizations to improve the socio-economic of women in the country and said: “It is vital that women lead small and medium-sized enterprises to improve their skills and obtain financing. He said that initiatives like BRFE will enable Pakistani women and enhance their influence on the nation-building process.”

At the same time, the virtual event also included two-panel discussions. One is a representative of the Ministry of Commerce, the National Bank of Pakistan, and the United States Agency for International Development, and the other is a graduate of the BRFE pilot project.

Panelists discussed the importance of financial management skills for female SMEs, paying particular attention to challenges and opportunities, and exchanged ideas on how to promote women’s financial inclusion by overcoming existing barriers.

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SheSkills takes yet another step to empower women in Pakistan. It has introduced digital skills boot camps. Now that sounds a pretty great idea. The women all around the world have their contribution in tech industry but only 14% of the women are providing their services in tech field.

As per the stats the 48% of population of Pakistan are women. That makes about 196 million women. To the surprise less than 25% women are working. To a much greater surprise only 14% are associated with the field of technology.

Nowadays many online classes and courses have sprung up. One of the problems that rise is the lack in setting up a class room environment. SheSkills has been designed by the combine efforts of Ladies Learning Code, Women Tech makers and WECREATE Pakistan.

A digital evangelist and community mobilizer Saad Hamid, who is also the one who proposed the concept of SheSkills, said during an interview,

“The concept of SheSkills came during a recent storytelling workshop which we conducted exclusively for women. At the end of it, we were overwhelmed with requests from girls who wanted to learn skills like coding, digital marketing, and design.”

He added,

“What we’re trying to do is teach them basic digital skills first and up skill later. The aim is to help them build businesses, either by developing their own products, or working on behalf of clients. One of the things we wanted to do is help teach women how to put together a decent website within a couple of days without extensive coding experience. That’ll help them get freelancing contracts or start their own products,”

This step aims to attract maximum women towards tech industry. The program aims to provide physical and online classes for 6 weeks. The classes will be about the web designing and development. In the second phase the course aims to teach women to use editing software like Canva and Photoshop.

Women can join the bootcamp with only US$20 per week or US$120 overall.

The program advisors include President of P@SHA and NEST I/O Jehan Ara, CEO Invest2Innovate Kalsoom Lakhani, Interaction Designer at Google Saba Zaidi, Digital Rights Foundation Founder Nighat Dad, and Code for Pakistan Founder  Sheba Najmi, Founder Salma Jaffri Media, Founder Shift Balance Aurelie Salvaire and Founder GetReadyU Tracey Vickery.

The other minute details are provided on the website of the SheSkills.

Source: Express Tribune

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