SCW unveils programme to support home-based female enterprises

Manama, May 7 (BNA): The Supreme Council for Women (SCW) has unveiled that it is developing the structure of a new programme to support home-based female enterprises. The programme aims to provide a permanent platform through which the accumulated experiences and best practices of Bahraini women entrepreneurs and businesswomen who own existing projects are transferred to female home business owners, which will contribute to advancing these projects, improving their products, accelerating their growth, raising their competitiveness and contributions to the national economy, in addition to increasing their impact in enhancing the levels of family and community stability in the Kingdom. The project is within the SCW’s “Bahrain Bkhair Thanks to You” Programme aimed at supporting its efforts to strengthen family and social stability in the kingdom. It includes social and economic aspects, as part of the SCW’s keenness to pay more attention to home-based enterprises, in light of the repercussions of the novel coronavirus pandemic. In this regard, the SCW held a remote consultative meeting with a number of Bahraini entrepreneurs and businesswomen, and introduced the idea of the programme to them. It reviewed the participants’ opinions about it and the best way to implement it. Opening the meeting, SCW’s Assistant Secretary-General, Shaikha Deena bint Rashid Al Khalifa, gave a presentation about the programme, stressing the SCW’s keenness to cooperate with its partners from the Industry, Commerce and Tourism Ministry, Labour and Social Development Ministry and the Labour Fund (Tamkeeen), in part of the kingdom’s policies to activate the potentials of all Bahrainis and integrate them in the sustainable development paths. She said that networking between businesswomen and owners of female home-based businesses aims to ensure that the latter receive appropriate guidance in the areas of operation, pricing, marketing, packaging, distribution, among others, in order to enable them to turn their enterprises into sustainable ones, operating with virtual or real commercial registers, which would provide them with opportunities to benefit from services such as obtaining financing from banks, and support from Tamkeen, Export Bahrain, and others. The participants expressed admiration for the programme, launched by the SCW to support home-based female entrepreneurs, expressing their readiness to participate effectively in it.