National Commission for Women launched two programs, Empowering Women through Entrepreneurship and phase 3 of We Think Digital on March 4 at Sindhu Sanskriti hall, Leh Ladakh. 

The programs were launched in the presence of Lieutenant Governor, Radha Krishna Mathur; MP Ladakh, Jamyang Tsering Namgyal, members, and other senior officials of the Commission.

Empowering Women through Entrepreneurship is an action-oriented business and management course to support and sponsor the digital learning of 5000 aspiring women entrepreneurs. While, We Think Digital is an online programme on digital literacy collaboratively run by NCW, Facebook, and Cyber Peace Foundation.

L- G Mathur said that empowering women to join the workforce and fostering entrepreneurship among women has many positive outcomes ranging from enhancing pay parity and productivity to alleviate poverty and contributing to the country’s economy.  

He thanked the National Commission for Women for working towards enabling women to achieve equality and equal participation in all spheres of life and providing women entrepreneurs access to knowledge and skills required to grow and sustain their entrepreneurial ventures. He said the digital training would inspire women entrepreneurs to leverage technology to accelerate their ideas and business growth.

Calling gender inequality not only a social and ethical issue but also a severe economic issue, Mathur said that the world would suffer if women, who make up for half of the world’s working population, are unable to achieve their full economic potential.

He also urged aspiring woman entrepreneurs with an idea to own and run an enterprise- be it in the IT or the beauty sector, food products or handicrafts- not to miss the opportunity and apply on the MyGov portal.

NCW Chairperson, Rekha Sharma expressed her happiness for conducting a programme in Ladakh for the first time in which women would be taught the fundamentals of starting online businesses. She stressed the need to make women financially independent. 

She highlighted the various programs conducted by NCW to empower them financially, economically, and emotionally. She further added that institutes such as IIM Bangalore are providing training to empower women. 

National Commission for Women has joined hands with the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore, and the India SME Forum for an online training programme to support and sponsor digital learning of 5000 aspiring women entrepreneurs. Selected women entrepreneurs will also get a special chance to be mentored and incubated after completion of the course.

Selected participants will learn the “Do Your Venture” ideology, which will teach them common paths entrepreneurs make when launching their own venture. They will also learn the tools and techniques for generating ideas and then test their ideas in the field and gather feedback. The Course will be sponsored by the National Commission for Women for all 5000 selected participants and will be delivered by IIM Bangalore. The Course is designed to enable aspiring women entrepreneurs to capitalize on this opportunity and learn from the eminent faculty of IIMB. The course can be attended from any location at a convenient time. During the course, participants will also be encouraged to leverage on the peer network through a discussion forum and other online tools at their disposal.

MP Ladakh, Jamyang Tsering Namgyal, Sushma Morthania, Director General of India SME Forum; Suresh Bhagavatula from IIMB and Vineet Kumar from Cyber Peace Foundation also spoke on the occasion.