Thailand
Cambodia: Digital entrepreneurship for women given a boost
The Cambodian think tank Asian Vision Institute (AVI), Woomentum and the Harpswell Foundation have launched a “Women Digital Entrepreneurship Programme (WDE)”.
It is a joint venture to empower women’s digital entrepreneurship, business and social skills via policy dialogue, training, research and publication.
The programme will kick-start with policy dialogue among female entrepreneurs and policy and change-makers on various topics including women’s entrepreneurship, women’s leadership, digital transformation, gender equality and sustainable development.
The dialogue will be conducted monthly via Zoom and live-streamed on the Facebook pages of AVI, the WDE and the Harpswell Foundation. In 2022, the programme will continue with a training programme, aiming to provide practical skills on how to harness digital technology for business development and to promote a trust-based community of women entrepreneurs. Starting in 2022, the programme will also begin its research into and publication about women’s entrepreneurship and digital transformation to contribute to policy recommendation in these fields.
Asian Cultural Council (ACC) Director General Suos Yara said at the launch that he welcomed the initiative. He emphasised that women have played a critical role in supporting both family and society during the difficulties of COVID-19.
“Our socio-economy has been hit hard by COVID-19. Last year, Cambodia’s gross domestic product registered a contraction of 3.1 percent, the lowest performance in four decades. This year we hope to see positive growth of about 4 percent,” said Yara.
“In this context, women entrepreneurs in particular will be the new drivers or engines of our economic recovery and the promotion of our social resilience,” he added.
Yara has also called on the national and international donor community to invest more resources in the development of women entrepreneurs, including digital entrepreneurship and leadership skills.
Dr Alan Lightman, founder and chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Harpswell Foundation, showed strong support for including more women in digital entrepreneurship.
He added: “There are very few women at the top levels of business worldwide. Only 9 percent of senior management are women, so we need to increase the number of female entrepreneurs at the higher levels.”
Lightman added, “We also need to give them the tools to succeed, including access to digital technology, skills in digital technology and knowledge in the digital world.”
Touch Socheata, South-East Asia director of Woomentum, shared her in-depth perspective that the programme aims to bring together women from different parts of the country and the world.
She added that when people look at women and girls in the city and rural areas, they notice some gaps. “We will use our programme to connect rural women, rural girls, women in Cambodia and women in other parts of the world,” she added.
Dr Chheang Vannarith, president of the AVI, addressed the rationale behind this initiative as being that those who do not have access to technology and internet are further left behind, so COVID-19 really exacerbates inequality. “This initiative will assist entrepreneurs in digitalisation by giving them certain and basic skills such as online registration, digital marketing and e-payment skills,” said Vannarith.
Source: https://www.khmertimeskh.com/50831382/digital-entrepreneurship-for-women-given-a-boost/