Startup Weekend seeks to empower women

IN A bid to empower women in the business arena, Techstars Startup Weekend Women Davao, a business pitch event, will be staged on September 28 to 30, 2018.

“Last year we organized Startup Weekend Davao in December, but now, we are doing it again, but this time we are going to focus on women,” Womenpowered Institute founder Mary Rose Ofianga said during the media conference on Wednesday, August 15, at Habi at Kape, Abreeza Mall.

Ofianga added that the event will allocate 90 percent of the tickets for women. Only 10 percent of the tickets will be allotted for other participants who want to join.

“The reason why we wanted to focus on women because we believe 50 percent of the working age population consists of women, but we are not well represented enough,” Ofianga said.

Ofianga said women in the business industry still have a lot of challenges to address like lack of female mentors and role businesswomen for other female entrepreneurs to look up to in the business arena.

The 54-hour Startup Weekend on September is where designers, developers, marketers, and startup enthusiasts come together to share ideas, form teams and eventually launch startups for business ideas.

In 2017, Startup Weekend accounted 38 business ideas from 20 attendees of the event which created 11 teams who contributed their ideas over the weekend.

Ofianga said the event kicks off on Friday night with a “Pitch Fire,” where participants are given 60 seconds to pitch an idea for a business. The best ideas are voted on and teams are created around the concept of their choice. Next, 54 hours are given to each team to generate a unique product to be presented to the judges on Sunday.

“We believe that by creating the right environment, a safe space to innovate and learn by doing and given the right tools, women will be better positioned to drive transformational change in our community and beyond”, Ofianga said.

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