Panda
Panda is a project that aims at enabling young women achieve financial freedom through income generation and job creation. The program targets young women (18-35), with and without businesses in entrepreneurial skills building through theoretical and practical training and mentorship on business development, mentorship and creating linkages to financial resources. In this project, young women without businesses are enrolled in an eight-week training on production of goods and services in sectors including agriculture, health, fashion and beauty. Young women with businesses are enrolled in a coaching program that focuses on facilitating business growth in young women businesses through one on one guidance on business development, financing and markets. The training embodies several workshops on financial literacy, digital marketing, business financing and VSLA financing. After training, young women are engaged in a mentorship program in which young women are connected to reputable business experts for guidance through the process of establishing and running new businesses. Moreover, the program successfully addresses the accessibility of capital and loans by creating linkages between young women and girls in business with Government and private stakeholders that provide capital, loans, and funding. Panda is a program that has directly enabled 1183 young women and girls to start small scale businesses where 117 of these young women and girls are currently running stable businesses. Panda has successfully linked more than 55 young women with capital and loans facilitated about 112 young women and girls to open Village Community Banks. The program has reached over 3,000,000 young women with knowledge and awareness on income generation both online.
Plan B Project
This is an innovative program that provides education to out of school adolescent girls to fight gender-based violence whilst building their financial resilience through entrepreneurship training. The combination of these two interventions has proven to be effective in reducing gender-based violence, as it equips young women and girls with the information, skills, finances, and other tools to mitigate the risk of experiencing it, whilst helping survivors to recover. Specific activities under this program include entrepreneurial and financial literacy training, facilitating access to credit and providing group seed grants to foster collaboration amongst young female entrepreneurs. This program couple economic empowerment with legal aid and capacity building on fighting gender-based violence amongst adolescent girls and young women and girls
Mshiko clubs
The purpose is to enhance financial literacy for adolescent girls in school and provide them with the tools they need to access resources, plan and control their future. Through this program girls learn how to save money and are rewarded for successfully adopting saving habits. Specific activities in this project include financial literacy training on key concepts such as savings, establishment of clubs, skills building on extracurricular income generating activities and girls agency empowerment to promote girls self-esteem and self-efficacy to help girls stay and enjoy school as they embrace their journey to financial freedom.
Digimali
Digimali is a project that focuses on enhancing adaptation of digital business operations among youth entrepreneurs to drive self-employment opportunities and maximize the target group’s eligibility for scaling up by improving their overall access to finance and expanding market reach. This program is specifically designed to enhance knowledge in online business, digital business ecosystems, business finance literacy and business management to drive self-employment opportunities and maximize the target group eligibility to scale up their businesses. Also, the program aims at promoting access to personalized business solutions and tools that will assure sustainability in business development and management as youth and young women entrepreneurs transition to digital business operations. The program incorporates the use of Trainer of Trainers (TOTs) to promote ripple impact in knowledge and skills among the youth. To date, a total of 2275 brick-and-mortar businesses have adopted the digital sphere in running their businesses through Digimali.
UPSKILLS PROJECT
Is a project that aims at helping young women and girls’ entrepreneurs to formalize their businesses to benefit from economic relief in times of crisis and qualify for funding opportunities for their businesses. To date, the project has facilitated business formalization to more than 100 young women and girls’ entrepreneurs.
PANDA DIGITAL
Panda Digital is Tanzania’s first hybrid E-learning platform in Tanzania aiming at enabling young women entrepreneurs to access skills, information and resources to start and run businesses in the digital economy. The goal of Panda Digital is to enable young women to achieve financial freedom through income generation and job creation leveraging digital technology for entrepreneurship.
Panda Digital is contributing to reducing the gender digital divide and the rural urban digital divide among young women by promoting inclusion, ease of access and convenience for young women entrepreneurs in Tanzania. In this regard, Panda Digital is available online and offline as Panda Digital website and Panda SMS respectively to enable access to young women to skills, information and resources with and without access to the internet. Also, Panda digital is completely free, designed with and for the user with content designed in Swahili and accessible to use by young women anywhere at any time.
Panda Digital is a multipurpose platform containing 3 sections; course, opportunities and markets. The course section where educators /experts share knowledge in a video format. The content type is audio and video; however, textual content and quizzes are featured in SWAHILI language. The opportunities section displays opportunities related to skills, resources and networks that can benefit young women. The market section advertises all businesses owned by young women.
Panda Digital is available on website www.pandadigital.co.tz and PANDA SMS 0767680463. Since the launch of Panda Digital website on April 2021 and Panda SMS on September 2022 to January 2023
- 3165 young people improved digital marketing and business skills through the Panda Digital website in 18 months.
1068 young people learned the same skills through Panda SMS in 5 months, with 6000 pieces of content shared.
Stawi LAB in Partnership with TWAA
Stawi lab is a network building project that aims at strengthening youth-led organizations that focus on girls and women's rights through capacity building and grant making. Stawi Lab aims at improving youth-led organizations’ structures and systems to enhance their access and to resources and promote sustainability in their work. In 2021, Stawi Lab worked to strengthen 18 youth-led organizations across regions in Tanzania through training, mentorship and provision of seed funding. In partnership with TWAA community 18 organizations were trained and mentored on identity, structure and function, resource mobilization, organization development, monitoring and evaluation systems, gender centralization, sustainability on impact delivery, strengthening and financial management. Also, the organization supported 3 best performing organizations with small unrestricted grants of Tsh 5,000,000, Tsh 3,000,000 and Tsh 1,000,000 to strengthen their organizations. Now, Stawi Lab is growing into a network that works to advance youth-led organizations’ systems, identity and access to enough resources.
PANDA DIGITAL MOVEMENT
Is a project that seeks to address unemployment to young women, sextortion, information asymmetric and deficiency of platform for young women entrepreneurs to meet for exchanging business experiences. The project is designed to achieve one major goal which is to create a platform for young women entrepreneurs that forms an avenue for them to explore knowledge, sharing skills, and resources pertaining their business ventures. Also, the project intends to stimulate debate and conversation around issues that affect prospects for their businesses such as sextortion, business formalization, and mobilizing capital.
Panda Digital Movement has created a platform for 4233 young women entrepreneurs to explore knowledge, share skills, and resources on how to start and run successful businesses. More than 10, 000,000 million people increased their understanding and awareness on how to overcome and respond to sextortion through the online campaign.
YOUTH EMPLOYABILITY BOOT CAMP
This program focuses on enhancing employability skills of the youth graduates to increase their chances of employment in the job market. In this program, youth graduates between the age of 18-35 are engaged in training and mentorship on essential employability skills including CV writing, Cover letter and email writing, negotiation and persuasion skills and problem-solving skills. Also, the program aims at providing volunteering opportunities to the youth graduate to experience real-life workplace activities, based on their areas of expertise.
This program was initially launched in 2018 as a volunteer program that has to date supported 28 youths with practical training in key department activities through volunteering with the purpose of exposing them to real-life workplace activities. The Youth Employability Boot camp is an element of the Volunteer Project initiated by Her initiative in 2022 for Tanzanian youth, particularly to provide practical training to fresh graduates, with soft skills through online training. Since the launch of the pilot, the program has impacted 75 youth graduates with essential employability skills and provided placement opportunities to 5 youth in partner organizations, including corporate companies and NGOs.
FIKIA + PROJECT
FIKIA+ is a program that aims at supporting comprehensive implementation of HIV prevention, testing, care and treatment, lab, and VMMC interventions at the community and facility level in Mwanza region in Tanzania. Her Initiative implemented this project in partnership with ICAP Columbia University in Tanzania together with local government authorities. In this project, Her Initiative supported People Living with HIV, Adolescent Girls and Young women (PLHIV AGYW) (15 – 24 years) with economic empowerment sessions tailored at creating demand for HIV testing and ART services in the Mwanza region. Her Initiative provided AGYW with training and mentorship on the use of business model canvas, digital marketing, economic empowerment concepts and entrepreneurial skills to promote livelihood and financial resilience.
Fikia+ project intends to create awareness to PLHIV AGYW on digital skills on the use of digital technologies in doing business, so as they can utilize the economic opportunities found within their living areas. To date, Her Initiative has supported 103 PHLIV AGYW with economic empowerment sessions tailored to creating demand for ART services as part of supporting this key population with comprehensive access, adherence and retention to treatment.