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UNESCO UNITWIN Women's Empowerment Initiative

"If you change women, you can change the entire country"

A live digital entrepreneurship training session at Souphanouvong University in Lao PDR. Photo by Sookmyung Women's University.

Sookmyung Women's University (President Yunkeum Jang) announced on June 5th that it has successfully completed online digital entrepreneurship training with students from four ASEAN universities.

The training was held for eight weeks in April and May as part of the "2023 Sookmyung Women's University UNESCO UNITWIN Program for Women's Empowerment through Digital and Leadership Training," which was organized by the Asia Pacific Women's Information Network Center (APWINC), as the UNESCO Chair.

UNESCO UNITWIN is a project that promotes knowledge sharing and cooperation among universities around the world to strengthen the capacity of higher education institutions. Since 2016, Sookmyung Women's University has been conducting various educational programs with 18 universities in 9 countries under the theme of empowering women through digital and leadership education.

Faculties from Sookmyung Women’s University and external experts provided digital entrepreneurship training in a blended learning format to more than 80 students from local partner universities, Souphanouvong University, National University of Laos in Lao PDR, Quy Nhon University in Vietnam, and Universitas Gadjah Mada in Indonesia.

In addition to entrepreneurship, students acquired knowledge of digital contents and soft skills such as data management and internet marketing. They also attended lectures that incorporated entrepreneurship contents such as marketing and venture funding, and developed business ideas while working on group projects that would help them find employment opportunities and start their own businesses.

It is evaluated that the program compensated for the limitations of non-face-to-face lectures and enhanced self-directed learning by inducing students to conduct in-depth discussions and Q&As in live lectures after taking courses on the online platform.

Sookmyung Women's University's APWINC will invite students who perform well in this training to participate in the UNITWIN Digital and Leadership Advanced Workshop & Hackathon Program in November.

"When you change women, you can change the entire world," said Jung-in Jo, Deputy Secretary-General of the APWINC, "and this project will be an important opportunity to encourage innovative education at our partner universities in ASEAN."