Skill development: Empowering women through food tech

Workshop on enabling women to focus on self-efficiency concludes

LAHORE: “For UN Women Pakistan, innovation is not just another buzzword. It is a way of thinking and doing, which we aim to infuse in all other areas of our work, including ending violence against women,” UN Women’s Country representative Jamshed M Kazi said on Friday.

He was speaking at the closing session of a skills development workshop on Women and Food Tech Sharing Economy: Employability and Empowerment. UN Women, the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women had organised the workshop from January 25 to 29 to enable women to focus on self-efficiency and resourcefulness through innovation. The participants included social entrepreneurs, international and local NGOs, homebased workers (including marginalised and transgender), technology institutes, IT students, food bloggers and representatives from UN agencies in Lahore, Islamabad and Karachi.

Vimlendu Jha and Pratik Kumar, social entrepreneurs from India, had been invited to facilitate the workshop. Training sessions were based on their successful pioneering social venture in India called Million Kitchen, a mobile-based home food ordering platform that enables home cooked meals to be delivered at the consumers’ doorstep.

The aim of UN Women’s initiative is to introduce and replicate this innovative approach for women homebased workers in Pakistan, and enable them to access new markets and create income generation through ICT, and further create employability, enterprise development and women’s economic empowerment, UN Women Pakistan said in a statement.

UN Women had brought together a diverse array of stakeholders who discussed, experimented and tested their prototypes throughout the workshop. The participants received training in administration, budgeting and information and communications technology, all leading up to a practicum on January 28 where women home based workers successfully sold their home cooked food online.

Provincial Commission on the Status of Women Chairperson Fauzia Viqar welcomed the initiative and urged the participants to continue the project. HomeNet Pakistan Programme Officer Tehzeeb Baqar said the workshop had been different. “Usually training for women focus on traditional skills, while this week they have learned to challenge themselves to think in a more innovative way regarding women’s skills.” Women Development Secretary Amna Imam applauded the women for taking the opportunity to learn about economic empowerment.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 30^th,  2016.