TiE Islamabad convened a quarterly progress review meeting with the United Nations Women Pakistan team and consortium partners Code for Pakistan and Akhter Hameed Khan Foundation, bringing together key stakeholders of the DA4WEE initiative, which stands for Digital Access for Women’s Economic Empowerment, supported by the Korea International Cooperation Agency. The review session moved beyond numbers and milestones to focus on the real stories of impact emerging from the ground, and on the progress being made through Model Project Centers operating across Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
The DA4WEE initiative is working to transform Model Project Centers across the province into genuine centers of opportunity for women, where digital access serves not merely as connectivity but as a concrete pathway into learning, skill development, and economic participation. Officials noted that these spaces are slowly but steadily fulfilling that purpose, with women in communities that have historically been underserved by both digital infrastructure and economic opportunity beginning to access training, tools, and platforms that allow them to engage meaningfully with the formal economy. The initiative recognises that digital inclusion for women requires more than hardware and internet access; it demands structured programming, community trust, and institutional support to translate connectivity into lasting economic change.
The review session reflected the multi-stakeholder model that underpins the DA4WEE programme, bringing together TiE Islamabad’s entrepreneurship and innovation network, UN Women Pakistan’s gender equality mandate, Code for Pakistan’s civic technology expertise, and Akhter Hameed Khan Foundation’s deep roots in community development, all aligned around a shared commitment to making Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Model Project Centers work as engines of women’s economic empowerment. The programme’s progress in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa holds significance not only for the women directly benefiting from the centers but also as a model for how coordinated multi-sector collaboration can convert digital infrastructure investment into inclusive economic outcomes across Pakistan’s more underserved provinces.
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