GLOBAL — Indosat, member of Ooredoo Group, received international recognition last week for its longstanding commitment and dedicated initiatives to empower women. Indosat was presented with the Women Empowerment Award 2015: Gold of Global CSR Award at the 7th Annual Global CSR Summit & Awards 2015 ceremony, held in Yogyakarta, Indonesia.
“We are delighted to receive this acclaimed international recognition for our work to empower women in Indonesia. We believe that Indonesia’s women should have greater access to ICT facilities and we are passionate about providing support to our nation’s womenpreneurs. We believe these targeted services will not only help to enrich their lives but will also help them to achieve their potential as powerful drivers of our country’s economic growth,” said Alexander Rusli, President Director and Chief Executive Officer of Indosat.
More than 200 senior executives from multinational and leading corporations in Asia attended the event, with a final selection of 36 companies from over 200 global entries being awarded top honours in the 7 main award categories: Best Community Programme, Best Environmental Excellence, Excellence in Provision of Literacy & Education, Empowerment of Women, Best Workplace Practices, Product Excellence and CSR Leadership.
Nearly two-thirds of Indonesia’s entrepreneurs are female. Ooredoo’s Indosat focuses on these ‘womenpreneurs’, running a series of initiatives in Indonesia, under its CSR program “INSPERA” (Inspirasi Perempuan Indonesia/Inspiring Indonesian Women), with the aim of empowering women and improving the quality of women’s lives through ICT. All of the initiatives under this program seek to increase women’s access to information and business services through the use of mobile technology and emphasize the importance of ICT tools in strengthening the opportunities available to women entrepreneurs.
“Across our markets, we are leveraging the very latest in mobile technology to empower women. In recent years we have introduced a number of innovative initiatives across our footprint specifically designed to enable women to access and use ICT in a way that works for them. These include the series of initiatives operated under Indosat’s INSPERA program all with the intention of empowering women and using ICT to improve the quality of their life,” commented Dr Nasser Marafih, Group CEO, Ooredoo.
“This award is testament not only to the team’s hard work but to the remarkable opportunities these initiatives have created for women and their communities across Indonesia. These programs will be rolled out to include more women and communities later this year,” he added.
Reflecting a global priority across the Ooredoo Group, one of the key pillars of Indosat’s CSR efforts is to support the economic empowerment of women. With the INSPERA program, these initiatives include “Dompetku”, a mobile wallet, micro-finance service designed to give womenpreneurs the financial support they require and the Empowerment of Women Business Group, which supports entrepreneurship in the training cottage industry within Purwokerto.
Indosat is dedicated to supporting Indonesia’s women entrepreneurs by offering them greater access to information and telecommunication facilities that will help them expand their business networks and become powerful drivers of the country’s economic growth. At present, its support for women stretches across 47 communities in Indonesia and the Indosat team is currently rolling out the next stage of the INSPERA initiative which will encourage entrepreneurial spirit through inter-connectivity and the exchange of ideas on both a national and international level.
“This award is greatly deserved and we too appreciate Indosat’s long-standing, dedicated efforts to empower our nation’s women. Many women in Indonesia, especially those in rural areas and villages, possess great potential but are not given a chance to excel. We are delighted to hear of Indosat’s plans to touch more women, offer more services and work with more partners to provide training and greater assistance to women micro-entrepreneurs across the country,” said Sulikanti Agusni, Deputy GMS Economic Affairs Ministry of Women Empowerment and Child Protection.
