Posted on Sat, 2 Apr 2011
Five Minutes To Make A Difference
Don’t mind me as I sidetrack from the luscious bling, the bubbly and binge, and put aside my sequinned rose-tinted spectacles to share this bit of sobering reality check. According to latest stats, women account for 70% of the world’s poor. They work two-thirds of the world’s working hours but earn only 10% of the world’s income and own 1% of the world’s property. That’s sad, considering we carry 100% of the world’s population in our wombs, mother them and nurture them to adulthood. Plus, we had just marked 100 years of International Women’s Day.
If you’re burning with an idea to share or vision to put in motion, here’s a project that’s worth doing. ‘Project Inspire: 5 Minutes to Change the World’ is a competition recently launched by UN Women Singapore and MasterCard. Its aim is to empower disadvantaged women in Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa by giving them an opportunity to stand on their own feet.
So here’s how it works. If you’re 18-35 years old with a burning to make a difference, this competition gives you 5 minutes to pitch your visionary, life-changing idea to empower disadvantaged women and children “through education, skills training, financial inclusion or social entrepreneurship”.
If the judges like your pitch, you will join nine other shortlisted finalists who have to then convince a global voting audience of the strengths of your proposal, plus present live to a judging panel in Singapore at the end of August 2011. The winner gets a US$25,000 grant to put her idea into action in the 4th quarter of the year.
During this time, people can track her progress in the field, and hopefully find inspiration to change the world in their own way. In a subcategory, the best Financial Literacy/Livelihood proposal, which will be awarded a US$10,000 start-up grant.
Check out www.5minutestochangetheworld.org to put your vision into motion. Your 5-minute pitch can be in the form of a video or written proposal, expressing your idea and how you will use the grant to implement it.
You go, girl!
