Hi everyone. I work at the intersection of women/girls empowerment through philanthropy, impact investing, international development, and entrepreneurship. I'm the Investment Director on a new programme from DFID and the Nike Foundation called the SPRING Accelerator www.springaccelerator.org @springaccel which is just launching. And am an active impact investor in this space. I run an angel investment network focused on social impact called Clearly Social Angels, in London, and we have invested in a number of businesses with a positive "women effect". Glad to be here with so many great people.
Hi (and thanks already to Alan for the message of support!) - I'm working at Plan in the Corporate Partnerships team, focusing particularly on a new project with Credit Suisse and Aflatoun that will seek to explore how financial education as part of a suite of education interventions can empower adolescent girls in Brazil, China, India and Rwanda
At Women Win we equip adolescent girls to achiever their rights - using sports as the tool
Thanks Zahid. Great to be here. I am Payal Dalal and I oversee education programs globally for Standard Chartered Bank. Many of you might be unfamiliar with us but we are a global bank with a significant footprint in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East.
The largest program I run is called Goal and focuses on empowering adolescent girls. We are currently up and running in 22 countries around the world.
Ok let's kick off with the first question:
Q1: Where are the greatest opportunities to engage business in support of girl and women empowerment?
This depends on the value chain of the specific business and its core competencies - if they are future oriented (which successful businesses for sure are) they will see girls and women through the lens of their value chains and invest in their leadership, as early as possible. Standard Chartered Bank is a great example of understanding the long term investment in the financial literacy of adolescent girls through the Goal Programme.
Invest in integrating women into all stages of the business supply chain – This includes hiring directly as formal employees or also supporting businesses, especially MSMEs who provide source materials. When women are invited into existing supply chains it reduces their initial risks. For women’s businesses – no matter the size - this can provides a steady market for repeat sales versus rather than just one-off purchases. Great examples of large companies are Vodafone, Coca-Cola’s 5by20 initiative and Walmart. However, this can also includes banks that offer products tailored to women-owned businesses and integrate women directly into their marketing chains, such as Diamon Bank in Nigeria. There are also opportunities for larger buyers to buy directly from the sources to reduce the number of informal intermediatries in the supply chain reducing the market costs and raising the amounts women’s business receive for their products. Mercy Corps has had great success with this model in Afghanistan – exporting organic raisans to the UK, Guatemala, and Uganda.
I think that there are opportunities everywhere! Hence the exciting potential of collaboration in this area. The first challenge is just to define and identify where potential lies - where the objectives of or practice of a business overlap with the key activities and aims of an NGO (and/or a particular project) and go from there.
Hi everyone, really look forward to the panel's views on partnerships with NGOs/Corporate/Government to bring about lasting change? Mercy Corps' programme in Nigeria with Coca-Cola & the DFID brings a range of different actors to the table and wonder what other partnerships like this are out there?
The partnership that Coca-Cola has with UN Women is focussed on providing business skills training (including post-training support and follow-up), mentoring and networking for micro-entrepreneurs in the retail sector. We are mid-way through our three year program to reach 25 000 women. It's an incredible journey! Here are some success stories of the women we work with...
http://www.coca-colacompany.com/stories/5by20/5by20-success-stories/
I see there is a lot of scope to work on the development and delivery of innovative products and serices. not ony for household, and personal well being, but also for agricultural related technology. This is an area really uncovered. with the lack of of access to land, at least another area for acess to and control over resources is movable assets.
I posted a few links earlier, before we started, but I think that one of the things we need to constantly work on is to be thinking from the perspective of "what's in it for the business" to get involved -- in thinking about stakeholders across the entire value chain, as we design opportunities for collaboration. And that we have the opportunity to think as broadly as possible of where women and girls show up in the picture. As customers, as co-designers, as producers, entrepreneurs, middle management, distributors/salespeople, as owners. We need to be that broad but then also to get very specific about what we're looking for in collaboration, and how we can work together...
There are opportunities for Businesses, especially large multinationals or those with a large presence in a specific country to influence and scale an enabling business environment for women. This can be at the central, regional and local levels.
A great example is MasterCard in Nigeria partnering with the Nigerian National Identity Management Commission for issuing Nigerian IDs to millions – including women and girls age 18 and over - with no formal linked to a smart card. -- http://newsroom.mastercard.com/press-releases/mastercard-to-power-nigerian-identity-card-program/
Can we start by defining what "economic empowerment" really means for women and girls in Least Developed Countries where "time poverty" is as big an issue as "money poverty"
I also agree with Thea's comments. From a girl perspective, business is getting increasingly involved in looking at the challenge of youth unemployment - how they can play a role in educating and up-skilling the next generation, as well as providing entry-level jobs. Making sure you're looking at this with a gender sensitive lens so that girls have equal opportunities to boys and are gaining skills that will help them attain quality jobs is crucial.
I am looking forward to joining the discussion and perspectives to be shared about the role and importance of partnerships between corporations and NGOs.
Nelleke - thanks for sharing that info - sounds like a very useful webinar!
Hi everyone! Looking forward to joining in the discussion on behalf of Humana People To People, as part of Partnership team.
HPP runs projects in 32 countries worldwide, with a strong gender dimension. Part of our projects targeting women and girls include Micro-Finance, Community Development Projects with its Self-Help Groups, Farmer's Clubs aiming to link the women farmers with the market and form legal associations and Teacher Training Colleges- seeking to empower women by increasing their practical skills, knowledge and employability options.
The SPRING project brings together Nike Foundation and DFID's engagement around the Girl Effect into a venture accelerator aiming to improve the lives of adolescent girls, aged 10-19 in 8 countries, starting in Kenya, Rwanda, and Uganda. There are many opportunities for corporates, NGO's and others to collaborate to support these ventures and the change they are seeking to make in the lives of girls and their families. Very specifically, in order for some of these new businesses to work, there is work needed in the enabling environment that the whole ecosystem can be working on together.
I think the question really should be, "where aren't there opportunities?" I don't mean to be contrarian, but it seems there are investment opportunities (with likelihood of high ROI I might add) in every phrase of a girl's/woman's life.
If businesses want to think selfishly, we can think about the talent pipeline. For girls in the LDCs, there are so many challenges they must face even to complete their education. And without education, girls aren't going to be viable/competitive candidates for the jobs that the businesses are offering. So more businesses should consider enabling education and addressing the bottlenecks (such as child marriage, FGM, etc) that block girls from school.