The Fiji Occasions » Networking session focuses on empowering girls

The US Embassy in Fiji held a networking session for the 2020 and 2021 cohort of the Academy for Girls Entrepreneur graduates yesterday.

Chargé d’affaires Tony Greubel mentioned girls’s empowerment was one of many main financial engagements the embassy needed to deal with in Fiji and the remainder of the Pacific area.

“We actually suppose that the applications that we’ve been doing over these final two years have helped play a job and Fiji’s financial system keep resilience over these final two years by serving to deal with girls changing into resilient themselves.

“During the last two years worldwide due to COVID pandemic, it’s harm each financial system around the globe.

“And so, making an attempt to ascertain a enterprise, getting it going at a time like this, when lots of people are with out jobs, it’s all the time going to be a problem.

“However on the flip facet, many of those girls, they have been working for another person earlier than after which when the COVID pandemic occurred, they misplaced their jobs.”

He mentioned a few of these graduates of them used this as a chance to upskill themselves and be a part of this system to learn to begin a enterprise and turn out to be financial resilient on their very own.

“And as Fiji’s financial system expands now, with tourism coming again and the world financial system on the rebound there’s going to be extra money in Fiji typically, they’ve discovered the abilities over the past two years the place issues have been actually robust.

“Now, they’re on the place to have this increase markedly so it’s actually good timing, really. He mentioned Fiji had 0 per cent tariff entry to the US markets.

“We’re all the time discovering American firms, making an attempt to assist match with a international industrial service.

“After which we’ve our personal export alternatives, the place individuals can be taught and discover companions in distribution facilities within the US the place they’ll export their markets, export their wares and in addition as extra American vacationers are coming.

“They’ve can also discover the proper vacationer location and different proper locations to promote their merchandise to them,” he mentioned.

A complete of 225 girls have graduated from AWE. The US Embassy has additionally awarded a grant of $US20,510 ($F44,044) to WEBC and Makoi Girls’s Vocational Centre to run AWE for the third yr.