South Asia is one of the most dynamic regions of the world and in the last few years, the region has witnessed economic growth driven by reforms resulting in growth in entrepreneurship. The number of women led start-ups have increased manifold and with the rapid growth of ecommerce, the region is experiencing a change in the way business is conducted these days. Women entrepreneurs are considered as the key to economic growth but many women entrepreneurs in South Asian region face challenges relating to access to finance, ICT and are not able to expand their businesses and become part of a wider regional and global supply chains mostly due to lack of knowledge and limited scale of their businesses (micro, small and medium enterprises (MSME)).
Further, the COVID-19 pandemic has put an unprecedented and significant strain on the global economy and public health systems. The pandemic is deepening its pre-existing inequalities and amplifying the multiple and intersecting vulnerabilities faced by women and girls. While the businesses in South Asia have been badly affected by the pandemic, women entrepreneurs are among the worst hit. In such a context, e-commerce can provide unprecedented opportunities for women entrepreneurs to overcome those challenges and to explore the global and regional markets. E-commerce can be a powerful tool for bringing in greater gains to women entrepreneurs since it addresses the outmoded barriers of geographic isolation and limited access to information and financing along with empowering South Asian women entrepreneurs socially and economically.
While the COVID-19 pandemic has raised unprecedented challenges for South Asia, it has also created opportunities for greater digital transformation, emphasizing the need to bridge the existing digital divide. Strengthening and promoting women entrepreneurship in South Asia will bring many positive ripple effects including its ability to boost job creation, alleviate poverty and thus facilitating inclusive and sustainable growth. Keeping this in view, this training is being organised to equip the women entrepreneurs of South Asia to use digital and online platforms to expand their business as well as creating awareness on the existing opportunities for promoting business through e-commerce.
The online training will cover two modules – one basic training on digital marketing and e-commerce, and second training will be an advanced training on how to use e-commerce platforms to expand the business. The broader objective of the training is to enhance the knowledge and capacity of women entrepreneurs of South Asia to use e-commerce platforms to expand their business exports and participate in local, regional and global supply chains. This will also provide a building network amongst the women entrepreneurs who will be participating in the training, as they will be taught to use social media and ESCAP’s platform to connect among themselves.
Since this is an online training, the participants are required to have an email account and a laptop/desktop/smart phone etc. with internet connectivity. The training will also include a hands-on session on how to register and link with the e-commerce platform (www.wesellonline.com ), thus you will need to keep soft copies of the following available (they will be required to be uploaded during training session):
| Basic Training: 8th April 2021 (Thursday) | |
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1.15 – 1.30 PM |
Virtual training room opens for access to participants
Housekeeping announcements
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1.30 - 1.50 PM |
Inaugural Session
Opening Remarks:
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1.50 - 2.30 PM |
Session 1: Introduction on online e-learning course and ESCAP website on e-commerce
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2.30 - 3.45 PM
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Session 2: Introduction on e-commerce and digital
marketing
3.30 – 3.45 PM – Interaction with participants |
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3.45 - 4.00 PM |
Networking break (live chat) |
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4.00 – 5.30 PM |
Session 3: Using social media platforms for digital marketing and e-commerce
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5.30 - 6.00 PM |
Session 4: Recap, post-training online quiz and
feedback
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| Advanced training: 9th April 2021 (Friday) | |
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1.15 – 1.30 PM |
Virtual training room open for access to participants
Housekeeping announcements
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1.30 – 2.00 PM |
Session 1: Introduction and pre-training quiz
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2.00 – 3.30 PM |
Session 2: Hands-on training for registering to
www.wesellonline.org
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3.30 – 3.45 PM |
Networking break (live chat)
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3.45 – 4.45 PM |
Session 3: Registering with marketplaces like Amazon,
Facebook Marketplace etc.
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4.45 – 5.20 PM |
Session 4: Online rural marketing
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5.20 – 6.00 PM |
Session 5: Post-training online quiz and feedback
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