De Beers programme under HeForShe
Announces
with UN to support
1200 women
entrepreneurs in SA
Announcement
comes on the one year anniversary of De Beers Group’s partnership with UN Women
as a HeForShe Thematic Champion to stand with women and girls around the world!
De
Beers Group, in partnership with United Nations (UN) Women, is pleased to
announce the launch of a three-year capacity-building programme to improve the
livelihoods of more than 1,200 women micro-entrepreneurs in Botswana, Namibia
and South Africa.
The
programme is designed to equip women micro-entrepreneurs with business and
management skills to build their confidence and capacity to operate and grow
successful small businesses. It will focus on providing training to enhance
understanding of business concepts, including accessing markets, increasing
market share, generating income, creating jobs, and supporting effective
decision-making, communication and negotiation skills.
Tailored
specifically for each country, the programme will be delivered with local
implementation partners and focus on regions that have high levels of
unemployment and where formal job opportunities are limited. It has been
designed to ensure ongoing sustainability by building the capacity of
locally-based trainers to understand the specific challenges faced by women
micro-entrepreneurs, build access to peer support networks and support the
programme participants on an ongoing basis to implement the skills gained. A
wide variety of micro-businesses will be eligible to participate in the
programme, spanning retail, hospitality, agriculture, catering, produce,
manufacturing and education.
Bruce
Cleaver, CEO, De Beers Group, said: “I am delighted to launch this programme as
part of De Beers Group’s commitment to stand with women and girls around the
world, especially in our diamond producing countries where women play a crucial
role in supporting their local communities. When you support women business
owners, you support a community more broadly as women are proven to reinvest
more of their income back into the community and to actively support the
creation of jobs for others. Through these programmes, we hope to help equip
women entrepreneurs with the skills, training and confidence to build
successful and sustainable businesses.”
Anne
Shongwe, UN Women Representative, South Africa Multi-Country Office, said: “The
partnership and programme aims to complement national efforts on job creation
and economic empowerment of women by supporting women micro-entrepreneurs
through capacity building that is customised to address their daily challenges
in practical ways. Typically, micro-enterprises are informal and survivalist
and women manage them as part of their households.
While
some may have basic technical skills like weaving or baking, most lack the
business skills to understand their business environment and run sustainable
enterprises. Investing in women’s
economic empowerment, particularly with women in the informal sector, sets a
direct path towards gender equality, poverty eradication and inclusive economic
growth. Investing in the capacity
development of women micro-entrepreneurs leads to those women having higher
incomes, better access to and control over resources, and greater security as
they gain financial independence.”
First year anniversary of
De Beers Group’s partnership with UN
Women:
The
programme is part of De Beers Group’s three-year partnership with UN Women,
which includes a US$3 million investment to advance women and girls in De Beers
Group’s diamond producing countries, announced in September last year.
In
addition to the capacity-building programme for women micro-entrepreneurs in
southern Africa, De Beers Group is providing scholarships to young women and
girls in Canada to pursue studies in STEM (science, technology, engineering and
mathematics). To date, eight university scholarships have been awarded, with
the aim of a further 19 multi-year scholarships by 2020. De Beers Group also
sponsored a summer science camp at the University of Waterloo for 13 and 14
year old girls from indigenous communities near the company’s Gahcho KuĂ© mine,
which included visits to Google’s HQ and the Perimeter Institute for
Theoretical Physics.
As
a UN Women HeForShe Thematic Champion, De Beers Group has also committed to
achieving parity in the appointment of women and men into senior leadership
roles in its own organisation, as well as ensuring the company’s brands are a
positive force for gender equality through all its marketing campaigns.
Over
the past 12 months, De Beers Group doubled its appointment rate of women into
senior positions, with 51 per cent of new senior hires being women. A set of
new inclusive marketing guidelines has also been developed, and highly
successful campaigns have been run by De Beers Group’s consumer brands
Forevermark and De Beers Jewellers, featuring real and remarkable women.
Bruce
Cleaver said: “We are proud of the progress we’ve made over the past year and
have been extremely encouraged by the shared enthusiasm for our goals across De
Beers Group and the wider diamond industry. We are still early on our journey
and are determined to stand with women and girls in the pursuit of true gender
equality.”
Bruce
Cleaver will today join other CEOs and world leaders at UN Women’s HeForShe
Impact Summit during the UN General Assembly to discuss the approaches their
businesses and countries are taking to achieve gender equality. The HeForShe
Emerging Solutions for Gender Equality Report will be released at the summit,
sharing close to 100 emerging solutions on how to achieve gender equality.
HeForShe is a UN
Women solidarity movement for gender equality. UN Women is the United Nations
entity for gender equality and the empowerment of women, with the goal of
accelerating the achievement of ‘Planet 50-50 by 2030’ – UN Women’s vision for
a gender equal world.
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