WOMEN EMPLOYABILITY SUMMIT
Center for Awareness Training & Development (CATD) in collaboration with Shaheed Benazir Bhutto Women University Peshawar (SBBWU Peshawar) organize Women Employability Summit annually to prepare young women for job & business sector, equip them with the necessary tools & skills to make a transition from campus to the workplace and be more employable. WES helps young girls interact them with experts, job sector and facilitate them getting employment opportunities where they also have the opportunity to network with members of the corporate community, employers and exchange career-related information with key employment provider and experts to have equal access to the socio-economic opportunities. Women Employability Summit is an annual summit of young women studying in colleges, university and recent graduates with a vision to work for SDG Goal: Goal# 4: Quality Education Goal# 5: Gender Equality Goal# 8: Decent work and Economic Empowerment Goal#17 Partnerships to achieve the goals. The summit helps young girls meet the experts, industry leaders, job sector organizations through summit and career fair and participate in multiple workshops and learning seminars to get equipped with employability skills within the campus. It is a multi-stakeholder gathering to develop industry-academia linkages where companies from all sectors, leading industry experts, inspirational leaders, academic institutions and government departments participate to equip the young girls to be ready for job sectors, hire young talent and help them network for getting employment opportunity. Women Employability Summit is a two days summit comprising of customized learning workshops, career fair, panel discussions, women and economic empowerment, women and digital skills workshops & talks, industry leaders panel discussions and networking sessions, interviews with employers, hiring sessions and career mentoring sessions. Through an integrated approach of engaging educational institutions, students, experts, government and development sector and potential employer this project benefit more than 1200 young girls directly during the summit and 3000 girls indirectly from the pre-summit workshops in different women institutions.
KEY CONSTRAINTS TO WOMEN’S EMPOWERMENT AND GENDER MAINSTREAMING
Several constraints undermine women’s development across the KP growth sectors. Lack of access to skills and entrepreneurship training, and microfinance are well known. Furthermore, discriminatory labor markets relegate women to largely unpaid or underpaid labor in the informal economy. Social attitudes which confine women to the home restrict their participation in the labor force even when quality and skillful education opens up new employment opportunities. Women also face significant time poverty when trying to balance domestic responsibilities with participation in the labor force. Finally, poor access to transportation inhibits women’s ability to participate in the formal paid labor market.
OBJECTIVES
The objectives of the Women Employability Summit are;
- Helping women especially young girls get quality education and acquire job market needs based skills and knowledge to be more employable.
- Training and provide market exposure to 1200 young girls during the Women Employability summit through career fair, learning workshops and interaction with experts and job sector, and equip 3000 young girls with employability skills during pre-summit training workshops.
- Connecting girls with job sector to network with potential local employers, and help the women institutions of KP build industry-academia linkages by providing them equal employment opportunities for women socio-economic empowerment.
- To work for and achieve SDG’s Goal no. 4: Quality Education, Goal no. 5: Gender Equality, Goal no. 8 Decent work and Economic Growth, and Goal no. 17 Partnership to achieve the goals for women by engaging all key stakeholders to partner for women socio-economic empowerment.
LEARNING SEGMENTS
Women Employability provides young girls a highly-engaging, effective and interactive experience that results in a powerful learning outcome by acquiring new skills and market knowledge, know about and get employment opportunities and networking with job sector and experts. The key learning segments of the Women Employability Summit are;
- Digital Skills & Online Earning
- Employability Skill
- Women Entrepreneurship
- Technology, Innovation and Market opportunities
- Quality Education for Women
- Career Selection and Career Planning
- Equal opportunities & Women Right Education
APPROACH
Women Employability Summit is highly collaborative, interactive and tailored to specific needs of young girls to be aware of and acquire market needs based skills which make them more employable. During Women Employability Summit, we work closely and effective with young girls, the female institutions and other key stakeholders to measure and refine programs for greatest results. Through series of effective and productive intervention Women Employability summit creates lasting impact and key approach to the summit are;
PRE SUMMIT TRAINING WORKSHOPS
Through series of learning workshop, more than 2000 young girls are trained annually in different women institutions by leading job market experts Summit Orientations: We make it more exciting and interactive by doing orientation of the summit two months before to aware and engage the young girls for participation in the summit Career Fair: Career fair at WES summit brings together local and national employers, women institutions and young girls to interact with each, network and provide employment opportunities to the young girls by direct hiring in the summit for the available employment opportunities with the participating employers. Learning workshops and Panel Discussions: Through series of learning workshop on pre-defined skills/topics and engaging job sector experts and employers in the panel discussion, WES helps young girls get knowledge about the market, learn market needs based skills, interact with the experts and network with them for future mentoring and opportunities. Social Venture Competition: Women Employability summit provides young women entrepreneurs/startups present their ideas to solve local challenges women faces, and the potential ideas get funds and mentorship for successful execution of the social venture lead by the women startups/entrepreneurs. Women Talent and Success Stories: WES summit is platform to highlight and promote local women talent where it bring young talented girls to share their story inspire other girls and take a lead in mentoring other girls. Public-Private Partnerships: WES brings together both Public and Private organization to interact and partner with each other to provide socio-economic opportunities to the young girls.
STAKEHOLDERS PARTICIPATION DIVERSITY
Women Employability Summit is an integrated approach to engage all key stakeholders to ensure we achieve the set objectives of the summit. Women Employability Summit ensures diversity and inclusiveness by partnership with the following key stakeholders; – Young Girls, Women Entrepreneurs/Startups, Female Academic Institutions, Job Market & Employers, Job Market Experts, Development, Government & Corporate Sector Sector, Print & Electronic Media, Small and Medium Enterprises (SME’s), Academic Experts and Researchers.