Male Champions of Change Step Forward to Help Women Led Businesses
Lahore (Muhammad Yasir) All Pakistan Women Movement hosted Her Mentor Galore Dream – Learn – Scale on otherday, from 3 pm to 6pm at COLABS Gulberg, Lahore.
All Pakistan Women Movement is an awareness, advocacy and capacity building initiative to increase financial inclusion and economic empowerment of women. We have curated multiple programs to help women develop their skills and find avenues to start and scale their ventures All Pakistan Women Movement aims to train, support and educate women entrepreneurs. Her Mentor Galore is aimed to address the business challenges of women and help them find solutions to those challenges.
Her Mentor Galore started with an introduction of the program and how it is aimed to support the women entrepreneurs through different engagement workshops over 3 months. Javaria Khan, Founder All Pakistan Women Movement talked about the importance of financial independence of women and how it is important for the society. She also talked about the programs APWM has designed to help women gain financial independence.
The welcome was followed by a brief talk by Humayun Mazhar, President TiE Lahore Chapter. He talked about the mandate of TiE Lahore to support women led businesses and help them grow through mentoring and networking opportunities. The talk was followed by a keynote speech of Andleeb Abbas, Parliamentary Secretary for Foreign Affairs, on the importance of mentoring for women led businesses. She also talked about the potential in Pakistani women and the impact of their work on Pakistan.
In the next part of the program the 30 shortlisted women led startups introduced themselves and their startups. They were matched with 15 industry leaders to have one-on-one mentoring on their business ideas to take guidance to grow their ventures. The male champions of change and women leaders from the industry stepped forward to help women led businesses. The mentors included Humayun Mazhar President TiE Lahore Chapter, Dr. Omar Chughtai Director Operations Chughtai Lab, Shaista Ayesha CEO and director SEED, Muhammad Ijaz President CEO CLUBS Worldwide Pakistan Chapter, Aftab Mahmood Butt CEO KAPCO, Faisal Sherjan Advisor to the Board, Sadaffe Abid Founder & CEO CIRCLE, Khurram Zafar Venture Capitalist, Innovation and Entrepreneurship Evangelist, Syma Arshad Head Group of Human Resources The City School, Dr. Farah Arif Founder and CEO EdTechWorx, Javaria Khan Founder APWM, Salim Ghauri Founder and CEO Netsol Technologies, Ahmed Khan Founder Cheetay, Zahid Hussain CEO Borjan, Qasif Shahid Co-founder & CEO FinJa, Adnan Bashir Founder and CEO Vantage.
These 15 mentors will be helping the businesses over the period of 3 months through a hybrid of on-the-ground and online sessions to ensure inclusion and equity for women in the society. All of them agreed that the success of an ecosystem lies in diversity and inclusion. The one-on-one mentoring went on for one and half hours. The event concluded on a positive note with active participation from the mentors and start-ups, who applauded the efforts of APWM to support women led businesses. The event ended on a networking session where the startups had an opportunity to network with all the industry experts.
