By Kamran Hashim
Join Hands with Nighat & Hira (JHWNH) is a non-government organization was founded by Nighat Mehmood and Hira Anis. JHWHN works on ‘Women Empowerment’ and for this very purpose a training session was arranged which was titled as ‘train the trainer’ for home-based women entrepreneurs. This will be a series of training where Master Trainers from JHWHN will be training home-based women entrepreneurs on various subjects ranging from business-etiquettes, precise-business-discussion, business-pointers, manners and body-language and many more missing elements.
Nighat Mehmood one of the founder of JHWNH was speaking with our correspondent and she said; “first training-session was conducted during an event held by JHWNH, the trainers were scheduled to be the founder & co-founder of the group themselves, Nighat Mehmood and Hira Anis, but unfortunately only Nighat Mehmood was present as Master Trainer to train the trainers Nazia Fareed from Beauty Industry and Saima Mirza from Fashion Industry. Once trained they will arrange training session within fraternity.”
She added by saying; “the idea of this training came when number of ladies working from home/home-based entrepreneurs approached us for some sort training in handling the corporate world. We also felt that with increasing number of ladies working from home it is now necessary for them to improve their business etiquettes and self-grooming, to excel in their respective fields. To help them in regard, ‘join hands with Nighat & Hira’ came up with the initiative to provide them with the necessary trainings and coaching to help enable them to succeed in their personal and business aspects”.
Elaborating on the point further, she said; “most of these home based women entrepreneurs were not aware of corporate norms, values and etiquettes. Some of them who knew, but were afraid come upfront because of any embarrassment that may come their way due lack of confidence. They were also afraid to show up at corporate events / exhibitions just because they couldn’t brief about their products”.
“This prompted us take a step in direction of training for home-based women entrepreneurs. We decided to train them for corporate events, meetings, dress-up, how to carry your-self and also guide them on etiquettes and on manners to adopted during formal occasions. We will be focusing on being business-sharp along with business-pointers, precise-discussion, positive body language and many more missing elements”, said Nighat Mehmood.
Nighat Mehmood further said; “JHWNH aims to supports all home-based women entrepreneurs who can be working in any sector like home-based chefs, bakers, caterers, fashion-designers, jewellery-designers, crafters or any field that you can name and I am sure you will find them within JHWHN. We at ‘Join Hands’ have given them so much media-exposure during last few years and with that their confidences has grown by leaps too. With the exposure provided now many unrecognized businesses are now operating locally, nation-wide and internationally”.
On her concluding note, Nighat Mehmood said; “we also took into consideration that there aren’t any universities in Pakistan teaching business etiquettes and foreign universities are out of question due to affordability. For home based women entrepreneurs’ affordability matters a lot. To stay affordable, we have selected a team of trainers from within our Join Hands members who can train these home based entrepreneurs”.
She added; “I have myself attended training courses on self-grooming and etiquettes, apart from these courses I have also travelled a lot, which again grooms you very much. Hira Anis, co-founder of JHWHN specializes in self-grooming and time-management”.
“I must that, whatever I am today and whatever that I have learnt is because of my country Pakistan. Now I feel that I have to give back to my country and best way to give back is to ‘empower women, which will ultimately empower Pakistan. This will be my contribution to my country Pakistan and to my fellow pakistani’s all over the world. I see this as a debt on me, which I shall try to re-pay”. Concluded.
