Covid-19 action: Kashf Foundation wins UN Women's Asia-Pacific WEPs award

KARACHI: Kashf Foundation wins UN Women's Asia-Pacific Women's Empowerment Principles (WEPs) award for Covid-19 action. Kashf Foundation is the only Pakistani organisation that has been honoured at the recently held first edition of Asia-Pacific WEPs Award hosted by UN Women and funded by the European Union. These awards recognised the efforts of business leaders across the globe for their efforts in advancing gender equality based on excellence in six categories including leadership action & commitment, youth leadership, gender-inclusive workplace, gender-responsive marketplace, community & industry engagement and Covid-19 action.

Over 400 entries from 17 countries were received, while Kashf Foundation was the only Pakistani organisation to win for its 'Don't let corona impact your business' initiative in the 'Covid-19 action' award category.

In view of the devastating financial impact of Covid-19 on women micro-entrepreneurs from marginalised communities, the 'Don't let corona impact your business' initiative, led by Kashf Foundation, offered financial and non-financial products/services to help them rebuild their business.

The initiative adopted a multi-pronged strategy to support women rehabilitation in the country during this period. As a principal approach, Kashf Foundation pivoted its model to cater to the most immediate and medium to long term business needs of women micro-entrepreneurs in the country.

In parallel, a response strategy was also introduced to raise awareness amongst its 500,000 women clients about the contagion and how to curb its spread. Speaking about the initiative and achievement, Roshaneh Zafar, Managing Director at Kashf Foundation said that after the onset of the pandemic, it became imperative for the organisation to undertake evidence based interventions to effectively respond to the economic and social impact of Covid-19 on the marginalised communities, especially women.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2021