KEWOPA Partners with Google to Improve Gender Equity and Boost SMEs

The Kenyan Women Parliamentary Association (KEWOPA) is collaborating with Google in a bid to improve gender equity, diversity, and inclusion within organizations and the workplace by equipping more women with digital skills under the Grow with Google program.

The partnership is done in celebration of the #I am remarkable week, September 8th to 15th aims at empowering women and underrepresented groups to celebrate their achievements in the workplace and beyond.

Through the collaboration,KEWOPA will mobilize and supporting its members, their constituents, its network of women entrepreneurs, students and emerging women leaders to benefit from the IamRemarkable and Grow with Google programs.

I am remarkable is an initiative by two Google employees to challenge the social perception around self-promotion by helping participants feel more comfortable with self-promotion.

According to the Head of Brand and Reputation for Google sub-Saharan Africa, Ms Mojolaoluwa Aderemi Makinde, the Grow With Google online program offers free training and tools to help people acquire new skills to grow their careers and businesses.

”The company has strengthened its efforts to support Kenya’s, SMEs, entrepreneurs, software developers, and the education sector,” She noted.

Ms Makinde also confirmed that since the launch of the program in 2016, they have trained over 1 million job seekers, students, and SMEs in Kenya to acquire new digital skills alongside around 15,000 developers.

”We’re continuing to expand the program to support 100,000 SMEs this year and 15,000 more developers in the next two years through our free tool, Google My Business, which allows SMEs to build an online
presence and access global markets.”She noted.

The Sub-saharan Africa brand head who joined the forum virtually also stated that they have partnered with Banks to provide SMEs with access to finance.

Speaking on the #I am remarkable campaign, the KEWOPA Chairperson Gathoni Wamuchomba expressed her Joy in working with the Google team who would train KEWOPAs media and Social media team on how to package the remarkability of women in politics.

“All remarkable things are surprisingly simple, yet so powerful. Today, we’ve learned here that it’s not painful for us to identify our remarkability, and it’s also not painful for us to talk about it,” she said.

The forum convened by Content Development and Intellectual Property Trust (CODE-IP), saw the attendance of several legislators.

According to Executive Director, CODE-IP Trust, Alex Gakuru, the event is very special because it marks the first time CODE-IP Trust is engaging with women legislators on the theme of women and girls in ICT.

”The issue of women and girls in ICT is also crucial because of their under-representation in the technology space and careers. A study by the Kenya ICT Authority (ICT-A) found that women and girls were very
much underrepresented,” he noted.