Meta unveils two initiatives to promote female entrepreneurs and changemakers

By: WE Staff | Tuesday, 8 March 2022

On the eve of International Women's Day, Meta (previously known as Facebook) launched two projects to boost women's empowerment and enable women's entrepreneurship.

Every year on March 8, International Women's Day is commemorated. 

While Instagram's 'She Champions Her' campaign will honour women-led communities, Pragati, Meta's second CSR effort, will incubate and accelerate women-led charities that help women entrepreneurs in India, according to the business.

"At Meta, we are making efforts to bring gender parity to the internet by not only giving access to more women but also giving growth opportunities and platforms to women change-makers and women-led businesses," said Rajiv Aggarwal, Director and Head of Public Policy, Facebook India (Meta), in a statement.

Instagram's 'She Champions Her' will debut in collaboration with Yuvaa, a young media and insights firm.

The campaign is based on the idea that safety allows people to express themselves freely, and numerous women have used their passions to help other women by acting as change agents on issues like bullying, body acceptance, and even entrepreneurship.

The campaign will honour these women with a month-long content series on @weareyuvaa, featuring ten female changemakers including Avanti Nagral, an international pop artist and content creator, Manasi Chaudhari, founder and CEO of Pink Legal, a platform dedicated to women's rights and women's law, Mansi Zaveri, founder of the parenting community Kidsstoppress, and Navya Naveli Nanda, Co-founder of Aara Health and Founder of Project Naveli.

Open-mic events will be held in five cities across India, including Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, and Kolkata, to further the trend.

Meta's CSR effort, Pragati, was initially launched in 2020. In collaboration with N/Core (The/Nudge Centre for Social Innovation), it aims to increase women's empowerment by promoting female entrepreneurship.

In the most recent iteration, six women-led charities were chosen to receive help for fundraising, organisational capacity building, and strategic mentoring in order to increase technology awareness and adoption among women in India's last mile.

FMCH, Esther, Sajhe Sapne, Svatanya India Foundation, Tisser Artisan Trust, and Ekibeki are among them.

Each organisation would receive a monetary grant of up to Rs 50 lakh as part of the Pragati project.

FMCH is part of a 12-month accelerator programme in which it will receive mentoring and networking assistance from industry leaders.

The remaining five organisations will participate in the nine-month incubation programme and will be mentored by industry professionals as well as receiving networking assistance from Meta and the/Nudge Foundation.

The inaugural Pragati incubated four women-led nonprofit organisations, providing them with grants, mentorship, and network assistance, allowing them to positively touch over 16 million people. These NGOs also assisted in the development of digital capabilities for approximately 700 nonprofits.

The two projects, according to Aggarwal, will "hopefully be a movement that inspires change amongst others too, both as an ally in the enablement of women, as also serve as a paradigm of women-led successful businesses".