An orientation ceremony for the new women entrepreneurship initiative under Karachi’s Institute of Business Administration’s (IBA) AMAN-CED was held in collaboration with the Aurat Foundation under their Gender Equity Programme (GEP) sponsored by the USAID
The ceremony was organised at IBA’s AMAN Centre for Entrepreneurial Development (AMAN-CED), an official said on Thursday.
He said that the programme will mark the beginning of a certificate programme designed especially for women home-based workers in Karachi and Quetta. This programme is a part of AMAN-CED’s effort towards facilitating Pakistani women to develop and foster an entrepreneurial mindset thus enabling them to pursue entrepreneurial opportunities, he added.
50 highly skilled women have been selected for this particular programme, with zeal to start their own businesses and are extremely thrilled to find such an opportunity.
Introduction of the programme was then given by Women Entrepreneurship Programme Manager Soha Zulfiquar, who briefly explained the programme and pointed out the pertinent need of this programme for women.
She shed light on the concept behind this initiative by explaining the aims, objectives and expected outcomes of the programme and also mentioned that the duration of this program is 28 days – 3 days a week from 9 AM to 2 PM.
Another helpful element of the programme is that it will be taught in Urdu, so that the female participants’ learning outcome could be at a maximum level.
In his welcome address, Programme Director Dr Shahid Qureshi said, “We hope to empower the women and youth of Pakistan and IBA will keep playing a significant role through its initiatives.”
He told the participants that 2014 was the year, when IBA initiated this Women Entrepreneurial Programme, adding that another achievement has been unlocked by IBA AMAN CED, which is IBA Karachi winning USASBE’s coveted award for Excellence in Entrepreneurship Education 2017.
United Association for Small Businesses and Entrepreneurship (USASBE) has named IBA Karachi’s Womenx (a World-Bank funded) Programme as 2017’s Outstanding Specialty Entrepreneurship Programme Award Winner. It was for the first time that a university outside the US has won this prestigious award.
Aurat Foundation Deputy Chief Mahpara Shakil also addressed the audience and narrated the hurdles, which they faced during formulating the programme. She briefed the participants about the programme that GEP is in its 7th year with USAID, which started back in August 2010 and will be ending this year in August 2017.
Aurat Foundation has been granted 280 grants in 7 years via 12 cycles some of which are still in process. GEP revolves around 4 main characteristics, which includes access to justices, combating gender based violence, empowerment of women at workplace and capacity building of institutions that advocate gender equity.
Mahpara Shakil spoke about the merits of the programme and narrated a few success stories of how this programme has empowered women to overcome the gap between men and women.
Mehnaz Rehman said that theory is not only the mandatory requirement for the practical world, but skills are also needed. She added that the home-based workers are now a legal entity and will be given the rights too, as per the ILO laws.