Meta to celebrate and support women changemakers and entrepreneurs

In the run up to Women’s Day, Meta today announced two initiatives to reiterate its commitment to support those who’re empowering women, and enabling women entrepreneurship. ‘She Champions Her’ on Instagram will celebrate women-led communities, and the second edition of Pragati, Meta’s CSR initiative, will incubate and accelerate women-led nonprofits that are working to support women entrepreneurs in India.

Meta ensures that its community has access to inclusive platforms to express itself and that everyone’s voice is valued. The commitment especially towards women users and entrepreneurs, using Facebook and Instagram, is underscored by the continuous work on its products, programs and policies that enable safe expression and equitable opportunities. Rajiv Aggarwal, Director and Head of Public Policy, Facebook India (Meta), shared more context, “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. ‘She Champions Her’ and Pragati will further our efforts in this direction and hopefully will 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.”

‘She Champions Her’ campaign from Instagram

‘She Champions Her’ from Instagram, is 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 ‘She Champions Her’ movement will be taken further through open-mic events in 5 cities across India - Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Kolkata. These open mic events will be safe spaces where young people can share their journeys and aspirations as they focus on creating similar communities and spaces online and offline for women. Follow #SheChampionsHer to be updated about the campaign.

The second edition of Pragati, Meta’s CSR initiative

Launched in 2020, Pragati is an initiative to boost women empowerment by supporting women entrepreneurship, in partnership with N/Core (The/Nudge Centre for Social Innovation). In this edition, six organizations have been selected from over 1,000 applications received from nonprofits all across India. These organizations are women-led, early-stage nonprofits, working in the area of women empowerment, specifically on entrepreneurship, digital inclusion, health and upskilling.

The six nonprofits selected are Foundation for Mother & Child Health (FMCH), Esther, Sajhe Sapne, Svatanya India Foundation, Tisser Artisan Trust and Ekibeki.

• FMCH works across the slum areas in Mumbai to curb the issues of malnutrition and stunted growth for pregnant women
• Esther offers a five-month program to put women on an accelerated trajectory to be workforce ready
• Sajhe Sapne works with women in peri-urban areas to provide year-long career certification courses and training for viable employment opportunities
• Svatanya India Foundation works with women from slums in Delhi by empowering them through skilling and training by using recycled raw material in creating crafts
• Tisser Artisan Trust supports women in artisan clusters, like Varli in Maharashtra and Madhubani in Bihar by training them in developing better crafts and skills
• Ekibeki identifies traditional Indian crafts which are at the risk of extinction, focusses on reviving them through design, skills and market interventions and builds self-sustaining artisan clusters.

 With four key components such as grant support, fundraising support, organizational capacity building and strategic mentoring, the program will assist each selected nonprofit in driving awareness and adoption of technology among women in India at the last mile. As part of Pragati initiative, each organization will receive monetary grants of upto INR 50 lakhs. Of the selected organizations, FMCH is under the 12-month accelerator program to receive mentoring and networking support from industry experts. 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.