Women entrepreneurs; Telenor Pakistan, Facebook launch digital skills bootcamp

Telenor Pakistan in partnership with Facebook has launched digital skills bootcamp for women entrepreneurs, where 100 aspiring women entrepreneurs will be trained.

The inauguration ceremony was held at Telenor Pakistan's 345 Campus, attended by the company's CEO and top management along with Beth Ann, Head of Policy, Facebook, industry leaders, diplomats, and key stakeholders. With the launch of the bootcamp, Telenor Pakistan has begun implementation of its pledge under Girls Learn, Women Earn (GLWE).

Speakers during the session, shed light on how the GLWE initiative and other similar activities undertaken by the participating organizations were facilitating the search for prospective solutions to the issues that women in our society face. Initially 100 aspiring women entrepreneurs will be trained via Telenor Pakistan's flagship design thinking programme, ACTIVATE and SheMeansBusiness, Facebook's program on digital skills and the ambition for 2020 is to train 1,000 women.

Improvements in technology and implementation of digital services are helping erase barriers between suppliers and customers across the world. In Pakistan, there is immense potential for women in particular to demonstrate exceptional contributions in various fields.

This bootcamp launched by Telenor Pakistan in partnership with Facebook's SheMeansBusiness programme trains and facilitates women with essential digital skills for business growth and provides a space for entrepreneurs to make valuable connections. Through this, all partners are working towards achieving their goals of greater financial and digital inclusion. "We believe in creating an enabling environment for our team members to grow and excel both personally as well as professionally. Our partnership with the World Bank and Facebook is a representation of our efforts to provide a similar atmosphere for women across the country, who have the will but lack the resources to become partners in the development of our economy and society," Irfan Wahab Khan, CEO Telenor Pakistan and Head of Emerging Asia Cluster said at the inauguration. "We at Telenor Pakistan have always been a very strong proponent of women's empowerment and inclusion, both inside and outside the workplace. Being cognizant of their challenges, we have designed this digital skills bootcamp to equip them with essential skills to propel their careers further," he added. "When women do better, we all benefit. Pakistani women entrepreneurs are resourceful, and we want them to understand how going digital can help them start and expand their ventures. Through the SheMeansBusiness programme and our partnership with Telenor, we aim to connect entrepreneurial women with empowering tools, peers and networks," said Beth Ann Lim, Head of Community Affairs for APAC at Facebook.

ACTIVATE is a design-driven innovation programme of Telenor, which imparts aspiring entrepreneurs with creative problem-solving skills. The foundation of this flagship programme is based on design thinking principles and is executed through design sprint framework by Google Ventures. The women entrepreneurs learned creative visual thinking and design sprint methodologies to quickly find problems and build innovative solutions.