Emerging Women’s Summit 2019: Promoting female leadership in social entrepreneurship and impact investing

Wednesday, 18 September 2019 00:00 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

The Lanka Impact Investment Network (LIIN) has announced the Emerging Women’s Summit (EWS), the first ever regional event in the northern part of Sri Lanka that promotes female leadership in social entrepreneurship and impact investing, will be held on 29 September from 3:00 p.m. onwards at the Jaffna Library auditorium.

EWS focuses on women’s indispensable role in accelerating Sri Lanka’s economic growth, advancing women’s visibility in social enterprise leadership, sharing inspirational stories by successful women entrepreneurs from the North and discussing the creation of a female network of impact investors, mentors and social entrepreneurs. This summit benefits women social entrepreneurs in various ways such as improving access to finance through impact investment for business start-ups and incubation, expanding business networking and marketing and connecting them to the Women Mentorship Circle (WMC) for coaching and mentoring support.

LIIN is playing a crucial role at this summit by facilitating a dialogue on various issues and obstacles particularly affecting women leadership in social enterprise development through panel discussions and networking sessions with leading businesswomen and men from the North who inspire and promote women leadership and are ready to offer support as mentors and impact investors.

The panel consists of leading businesswomen from the North who will share their stories of success, various issues and the bottlenecks they have faced as female entrepreneurs in the Northern context and how they have transformed those challenges into successes. Following the panel discussion, opportunities will be given to others attending the summit to ask questions from panellists. Subsequently, the networking at the marketplace segment will provide openings for participants to meet other women entrepreneurs and impact investors.

The key panellists are J. Jaruza – CEO eZbooking and Women Wing of the Chamber of Commerce Jaffna; M. Dilaxshana - CEO SHADES IT Solution Vavuniya; S. Mathangie - Founder of NORO Solutions; P. Kalpana – Managing Director of Sinbon Bakers and Whitestone Hotel and S. Sharuka - Manager SMILEZone. The panel is moderated by R B. Prashanthan - CEO Innovay and Happymarket.lk.

The key partners of the EWS North 2019 are the WUSC Uniterra Program, UNDP Sri Lanka, Lanka Social Ventures (LSV), Social Enterprise Lanka, Happymarket.lk, SMILEZones and Daily FT.