Women on Wings Booklet, 64 pages A6.
How to create one million jobs for women in rural India.
10 VITAL LESSONS of A SOCIAL ENTERPRISE
As social entrepreneurs we are committed to create social value. This value is embodied in the number of jobs we have created for women in rural India. In the space of ten years Women on Wings, in partnership with social entrepreneurs in India, has created more than 230,000 extra jobs. A job and steady income have enormous IMPACT on the lives of women and their children. Research by the World Bank and the UN has indicated that women use their income to give their children better education and food.
In this way, women break the cycle of poverty. Women on Wings is founded on the principle of achieving this type of IMPACT. Our personal experiences, which were defined by having mothers that are from a generation that did not go to university and stopped working as soon as they had children, was something that we wanted to give to women and their daughters in India. We wanted to make an IMPACT through paid work for women in a place where this is not a matter of course: in rural India.
But the IMPACT that Women on Wings had made went much further. In ten years’ time, more than 100 professionals have joined the Women on Wings network. These are experienced managers and entrepreneurs from the business community who donate their time on a charitable basis to support social entrepreneurs in India with their knowledge and expertise in organizational development, strategy, innovation, marketing, finance, logistics, purchasing, and so much more.
This booklet covers the IMPACT – planned and unplanned – realized by Women on Wings. It highlights our successes and the mistakes we made, or rather, to put a more positive spin on it, the vital lessons that ten years of social entrepreneurship have taught us. Entrepreneurship is about having a dream, about being persistent and tenacious, but it’s also about being able to keep the plates spinning, taking many different decisions, learning from setbacks, and making mistakes.
