Facebook’s #SheMeansBusiness initiative provides training and networking opportunities coupled with online resources for female entrepreneurs. #SheMeansBusiness will be back ONLINE, for FREE this July 29-31! Register  now at www.connectedwomen.co/shemeansbusiness

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#SheMeansBusiness was founded on International Women’s Day in 2016 “to inspire and train women entrepreneurs.” Since then, the initiative has been launched in 19 countries, trained 40,000 in person, and more than 50,000 globally. The number of woman-owned pages on Facebook has also grown by more than 60 percent every year since then.

The panelists at the Q & A were Gina Romero of Connected Women, an organization helping women with entrepreneurship and skills training; Reese Fernandez-Ruiz of Rags2Riches, a fashion and design house empowering community artisans; and Nanette Medved-Po, former actress who now heads Hope in a Bottle, a movement that builds public school classrooms from 100 percent of proceeds of mineral water sales.

Gina says she started Connected Women because being based in the UK before, where she was raised by an OFW Filipina mom, she wondered why the mothers in the community left their children in the Philippines. As she got older, that’s when she understood the situation and knew she wanted to come back and help in the Philippines. She co-founded Connected Women, an organization that empowers women through technology. Her organization also specifically train and matches Filipino women online remote workers with entrepreneurs around the world, aiding employment.

For Reese, she started her enterprise, Rags2Riches, 10 years ago. She says they started it because of a common irritation of a social injustice. She recalls how she met local artisans of stay-at-home mothers weaving rags out of scrap fabric. “They were earning P10 to P16 not per piece but per day,” she said. “For working for the whole day! So we thought that was just unacceptable.” Reese took action and decided to be business partners with these artisans with a goal of a sustainable partnership in mind to create real change.  “We knew if we would just stay for a project or a Christmas bazaar, it would be a great start but the key is to be a sustainable and reliable partner.” Rags2Riches began with making better-looking rugs then they worked with known designers like Rajo Laurel, Oliver Tolentino, etc. Now, they’re known as a fashion and design house empowering community artisans in the Philippines.

As for Nanette Medved-Po, who first gained fame as an actress back in the 90s, she is now spearheading Hope in a Bottle, a mineral water bottle project where the proceeds go to funds for public schools in the Philippines.

The Q & A was hosted by Chay Mondejar-Saputil, a Computer Science graduate who persevered to get into the world of programming. This mother, athlete, and pop culture fanatic has worked with Wunderman in the Philippines and is now a Client Partner of the Global Sales Organization of Facebook Philippines.

Here are lessons learned from their Q & A with Facebook #SheMeansBusiness on entrepreneurship, start-ups, and more:

1. Learn how technology can work for you.

Gina says that she was part of a women’s entrepreneurship community in the UK. “I’m actually part Filipina—I grew up in the UK [and] my dad’s British,” she explains. “I’m not a ‘techie’; I met my husband [Bobby] and he’s a techie. And I ended up falling in love with technology. Not because I really love the technology part but because of how it can impact and change your life.” Gina says that a lot of women don’t like technology; Connected Women is for that purpose, so women can adopt technology so that “they can do more with their lives and be more free.” “Technology for me is about being free,” she says.

2. Stick with what you’re passionate about because it can be challenging. Surround yourself with experts to provide guidance.

It can sound cliché, but this is what Nanette advises. “If you’re going to [run a startup], you better be passionate about it so that you love what you do,” she says. Nanette says in her case, she was in FCMG (Fast-moving Consumer Goods) business, so she decided to use water as the way to empower education in the country. Some aspects of the biz were new to her so she sought guidance from experts. “Because that was not my background, I made sure I surrounded myself with experts.”

3. Earn the trust of the community you work with.

“You have to understand [things] from [your community’s] perspective,” says Reese. She says of how these communities were already there for a long time and given promises as well by other people on how to make their lives better. “It’s like a love story—when you’ve been hurt before, you have trust issues,” she says. “Of course they had trust issues. Who were we who could change their minds? So we really have to prove it, had to build the relationship through time. And it took a long time!” Reese says it took about four years before she could say they had a community together where there was trust.

4. You have to get over yourselves. Think of working with communities as a partnership.

Reese adds that it’s easy to say that just because they’ve studied and they know better, they could go to a community and say they could help them.  This, she says, is why it’s important to think of working with communities as a partnership because if not, one will have a messianic complex and think the communities owe them so much. “If your motivation is bigger and you know you’re in it together, and you love the cause and mission behind it, you stay for a longer time,” she explains. This, she says, despite some small things not happening your way, or challenges happening to you.

 

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#SheMeansBusiness will be back ONLINE, for FREE this July 29-31! Register at www.connectedwomen.co/shemeansbusiness