Archive for March, 2011

The Arizona Costume Institute is bringing Thunderbird Project Artemis fellow Rangina Hamidi to Phoenix! Join us next week to hear from this inspiring entrepreneur. Ms. Hamidi was part of the first Project Artemis- Afghanistan class in 2005.

Kandahar Treasure founder and President, Rangina Hamidi, speaks about her mission of economically and socially empowering Afghan women by helping them produce embroidered artisanal textiles which are sold in markets throughout the world. The women of Kandahar make a special kind of fine-needle, exquisitely detailed embroidery known as khamak.

Ms. Hamidi escaped the violence of her native Afghanistan at the age of three, moving with her family first to Pakistan and then to the US in 1988. She returned to her homeland after the 9/11 attacks to help Afghan women establish a place for themselves in their society through sustainable commerce rather than charity.

Ms. Hamidi is a sought after speaker and participant in conferences around the world. She has been internationally recognized for her work with women and was selected as one of 18 finalists for the CNN 2007 Hero Award. In 2010 she was a speaker at the Clinton Global Initiative Annual Meeting.

For more information visit ArizonaCostumeInstitute.com.

ACI Members Reception: 6-6:45pm, Cummings Great Hall, Phoenix Art Museum

Refreshments will be served

Lecture: 7-8:30pm, Whiteman Auditorium

Free and open to the public

(To read more about Rangina, please see her profile here.)

The First Lady of Peru, Pilar Nores de García, spoke Dec. 14, 2010, at the graduation ceremony for businesswomen in the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Women program in Peru. The 30 graduates represented the first class in the 150-hour certificate program developed by Thunderbird and its partners.

Goldman Sachs and the Multilateral Investment Fund (MIF) of the Inter-American Development Bank launched the program in partnership with Grupo ACP, Universidad del Pacífico and Thunderbird.

Thunderbird Professors Mary Sully de Luque, Ph.D., Steven Stralser, Ph.D., and Amanda Bullough, Ph.D., worked with faculty at the Universidad del Pacífico in Lima to design the program, which focuses on advanced business education, international networking, mentoring and access to capital. Thunderbird will continue to work with Goldman Sachs 10,000 Women in Peru over the next four years, where it is expected that 700 women will graduate from the certificate program.

Thunderbird also partners with the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Women program to educate female entrepreneurs from Afghanistan. The partners also will work together to educate female business owners from Pakistan.

The programs are run through the school’s philanthropic arm, Thunderbird for Good. Proyecto Salta, a related Thunderbird for Good program in Peru, will deliver a three-hour business course to more than 100,000 women micro-entrepreneurs by 2013.

Today is the 100^th anniversary of International Women’s Day. This day has been a day of global celebration annually every March 8th since the early 1900’s to honor and celebrate women’s economic, political, and social achievements. At Thunderbird we believe investing in and celebrating women is a worthwhile cause.   When we invest in the positive development of women and girls it has a positive ripple effect on her family, her community and her nation.

Thunderbird for Good has made investing in women a priority since 2005 with the launch of Project Artemis, a unique two-week intensive entrepreneurship course held on Thunderbird’s Glendale campus. Since then, we have trained 63 Afghan businesswomen though our Project Artemis program. Women from numerous provinces in Afghanistan have taken part in business training programs and have had great successes.  For example, several women who participated in Project Artemis will both receive funding to use toward building schools in their communities, others have received sizeable grants and donations, and this year one of our graduates, Fatima Akbari, will receive the 2011 Vital Voices Global Leadership Award.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEHK6GkkHjI

In an expansion of the program, Thunderbird for Good will welcome 10 businesswomen from Pakistan for a Project Artemis style program operated in partnership with Goldman Sachs and the U.S. Department of State.  This program will run in early May.

Thunderbird is also a partner of the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Women business certificate program in both Afghanistan and Peru. www.10000women.org. In Afghanistan, classes are held at the American University of Afghanistan in Kabul, and in Peru, classes are held at the Universidad del Pacífico in Lima. The program in Afghanistan was launched in 2008 and so far we have trained 104 Afghan businesswomen, of which 47% report increased profits six months after graduating from the program and 67% of aspiring entrepreneurs who have graduated from the program report having started their own business within 6 months of graduating. We launched our Peru program in 2010 and so far have trained 60 businesswomen. One of our scholars, Maria Gilda, has been selected as a finalist for the Inter-American Development Bank business plan competition of 2011. By the end of 2013, we will have trained 700 businesswomen through this program in Peru, and so far through both of our programs we have trained 164 businesswomen.

Another exciting program in Peru is Proyecto Salta, a seminar based business training for women micro-entrepreneurs in Peru. This training is three hours and approximately 200 women attend each training session. We have created a telenovela or soap opera to go along with the training, and clips are shown throughout to reinforce the concepts we are teaching. The telenovela is a story about a businesswoman named Vicki who runs a small store out of her house but has aspirations to open a restaurant. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJA2aFSGNJo.  So far, we have trained over 20,000 women in this program, and by the end of 2013, we will have trained 100,000 women micro-entrepreneurs.

And today, on the 100^th anniversary of International Women’s day, Secretary Clinton announced a partnership between the U.S. Department of State, Goldman Sachs, and Thunderbird to provide business education to 100 women from around the world.  Those women will study together in classes at Thunderbird, not only learning from our faculty, but learning from each other as they participate in a “global cohort.”

You can learn more about the work we are doing in Thunderbird for Good by visiting our website at www.thunderbird.edu/t4g.