Financial literacy or basically the skills and knowledge about money and how to manage it is generally low among Bhutanese people. This is according to RENEW, a non-profit organization. In a bid to change this and to celebrate International Women’s Day, Tashi Beverages Limited and the Coca-Cola Company together with RENEW held a workshop on financial management for women running small businesses in Thimphu today.
The one-day workshop is aimed at empowering women running small businesses. More than 40 female small-scale retailers from Thimphu attended the event.
The participants learned about budgeting, savings, business management and the use of technology in businesses in the workshop.
They are hopeful the new skills will help them improve their businesses.
“I now have a better understanding of how to manage my shop and converse better with my customers. Some of us shopkeepers lack proper communication skills with customers, so I also better understand this,” said Dendup Wangmo, a participant.
“As we meet here today, some women have more knowledge of running a business better than others. We are able to explain to each other and share ideas,” said Sonam Dema, another participant.
The organizers said that small businesses are normally overlooked by everyone, so they wanted to focus on them.
“Lot of the training and other workshops are more on a corporate level or official level, but we wanted to focus on the women who are running small-time shops such as pan shops, mom and pop shops, and we thought that maybe, workshops like these would give them more confidence and also more skills that they can start to implement in their shops,” said Sonam Peday Thinley, the Project Coordinator for Sustainable Projects at Tashi Beverages Ltd.
Following the good turnout and positive feedback from participants, the organizers say they will organize similar workshops in the rest of the districts as well. The next workshop will be held in Chhukha soon.
Tashi Yangden
Edited by Yeshi Gyaltshen
