Makati – The Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) is partnering with USAID, Lead-More, and Havas Ortega to train women entrepreneurs on using digital tools to grow their business. The three-month program will be piloted in Region 4A in April, Iloilo in July, and Cagayan de Oro in October.
“In DTI we always say that for every job or business opportunity, we lift one Filipino family out of poverty. If we give these opportunities to women, we also empower them and help them become an inspiration for their families and their communities,” said Secretary Lopez.
The program, called Women Entreps-Digitally Enhanced Ventures (WE-DEV), is a three-month lecture and mentoring series to open opportunities for growth and sustainability among selected businesses owned or managed by women entrepreneurs.
USAID will fund the project and link entrepreneurs to online platforms Lazada and Shopee. Lead-More, led by Dean Pax Lapid and Jorge Wieneke, will provide training modules and mentor the women entrepreneurs.
Under the program, DTI will select 50 women entrepreneurs from the One Town, One Product program to be part of WE-DEV. These entrepreneurs will undergo the program that will begin with a two-day boot camp from Socialyse, a social media pure player from Havas Ortega.
In the boot camp, the mentees will learn how to create content and use analytics tools to track their growth. After the program, Socialyse will offer assisted campaigns by prepaid packages. Socialyse Executive Director Peter Juan said that sustainability in campaigns is important because in most seminars, mentees get excited after the first few days, but burn out when they run out of ideas.
WE-DEV will also offer lessons on basic business concepts like entrepreneurial mindset, marketing, product development, and finance. Afterwards, mentees will learn how to use digital platforms to sell their products, build their online presence, and establish payment methods.
The Philippines has the 2nd highest percentage of entrepreneurially-active females, according to the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor 2015-2016. We Are Social’s report also named the Philippines as the top country in terms of time spent on the internet in 2019. Filipinos, on average, spend 10 hours a day online. The global average is 6 hours and 49 minutes.
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