Nokia and UN Women is promoting financial independence for survivors of gender-based violence in South Africa

Nokia, in collaboration with UN Women, has launched a financial independence training program for survivors of gender-based violence in South Africa.

The announcement is timed to coincide with the United Nations’ 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence this year (GBV). The six-week training program will be led by Nokia volunteers in collaboration with UN Women, and will involve 100 women from Gauteng, South Africa, with a focus on digital skills, entrepreneurship, personal branding, creating professional CVs, and preparing for interviews, among other things.

Based on the results of a survey conducted by UN Women through a third party, the women were identified while taking their individual needs into account.

According to the aforementioned survey, financial dependency on their perpetrators is a major reason why women remain in abusive relationships. The majority of the women polled come from low-income families, are between the ages of 20 and 30, and are not employed full-time, with only a few working part-time.

They have generally been unemployed and are members of five-person households where less than one in every five people has been employed in the last three months.

Furthermore, the majority of program participants expressed a desire to be entrepreneurs, which is why Nokia volunteers have focused on, for example, assisting the women in developing professional individualized digital profiles and CVs that will help them be accepted into learning institutions and jobs to close the skill and experience gap. The majority of the women are single mothers with incomes that indicate they live below the breadline, which means that access to basic first-world amenities such as the internet is part of their daily struggle.

As a result, the UN Women and Nokia program will focus on financial empowerment for women through skill development in order to improve their employability and enable them to become entrepreneurs.

This program is part of a global Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed by Pekka Lundmark, President and CEO of Nokia, and Anita Bhatia, Deputy Executive Director of UN Women, that guides the partnership as Nokia strives to promote inclusion and diversity in society. Nokia has also signed on to the Women Empowerment Principles (WEPs), a set of guidelines for promoting gender equality and women’s empowerment in the workplace, marketplace, and community.