Eastern Highlands businesswomen unite to launch group

 ASPIRING businesswomen in Eastern Highlands launched their Sister-Helping-Sister Association in Goroka, Eastern Highlands, yesterday.

The launch coincided with the graduation of 93 women with certificates in business management following six months training.

Association vice president Rita Karre noted they would like to empower women to participate in small to medium enterprise (SME) activities to achieve financial independence and to live sustainably.

“We want to help women to become active participants in building the economy of the country, the association is formed for women to help each other in building capacity to achieve financial independence and live sustainably,” Karre said.

She said the four pillars the association was based on were capacity building, training and women empowerment, marketing and financial independence.

She thanked master trainer Linda Vyorite for conducting training for the women to partake in SME activities.

Vyorite said the association started seven months ago to help women to rise up, help each other and move forward instead of hiding at the back of men.

She said they initially had 261 women but they went through a filtering process until they had 93 who successfully completed all the business modules to graduate with certificates in business management.

“I thank Peter and Rita Karre for putting up an initial K10,000 seed capital money that the women are borrowing to start small business activities.

“We have assisted 50 women to get Investment Promotion Authority registration and 28 of them have succeeded in having good business plans,” Vyorite said.

The Small Business Development Corporation would assist in the next training to be conducted by end of this year.