Meta (formerly known as Facebook) on Monday announced two initiatives to support the empowerment of women, and enable women entrepreneurship, ahead of International Women’s Day.
International Women’s Day is celebrated annually on March 8.
While ‘She Champions Her’ on Instagram will celebrate women-led communities, Pragati, the second edition of Meta’s CSR initiative, will incubate and accelerate women-led nonprofits that are working to support women entrepreneurs in India, the company said.
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, – Rajiv Aggarwal, Director and Head of Public Policy, Facebook India (Meta), in a statement.
‘She Champions Her’ from Instagram, will be launching in partnership with Yuvaa, which is a youth media and insights company.
The campaign is rooted in the insight that safety enables free expression, and several women have pursued their interests to help other women, by being change agents on topics such as bullying, body positivity, and even entrepreneurship.
The campaign will celebrate such women through a month-long content series on @weareyuvaa, featuring 10 women changemakers such as 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.
The movement will be taken further through open-mic events in five cities across India — Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, and Kolkata.
Pragati, Meta’s CSR initiative, was first launched in 2020. It is aimed at boosting women’s empowerment by supporting women’s entrepreneurship, in partnership with N/Core (The/Nudge Centre for Social Innovation).
In the latest edition, six women-led nonprofits have been selected who will be granted support for fundraising, building organizational capacity and strategic mentoring to drive awareness and adoption of technology among women in India at the last mile
These are Mother & Child Health (FMCH), Esther, Sajhe Sapne, Svatanya India Foundation, Tisser Artisan Trust, and Ekibeki.
As part of the Pragati initiative, each organization will receive monetary grants of up to Rs 50 lakh.
FMCH is under the 12-month accelerator program to receive mentoring and networking support from industry experts.
The other five organizations are part of the nine-month incubation program and will receive mentoring from industry experts and networking support from Meta and The/Nudge Foundation.
The first edition of Pragati incubated four women-led nonprofit organizations to receive grants, mentorship, and network support which further enabled them to positively impact more than 16 million lives. These nonprofits also helped in digital capacity building for over 700 nonprofits.
According to Aggarwal, the two initiatives 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”.
