Women on Wings’ business partner Okhai was invited to speak at the ‘Global social business summit 2017’ at Paris, France, on November 7. Its CEO Kirti Poonia took the stage to share Okhai’s story of creating its impact by manufacturing and retailing products that are handmade by women in rural India.
Transform to human value civilization
Travelling across the globe, The Global Social Business Summit aims to bring together social businesses, social entrepreneurs and thought leaders who want to solve human problems. This year the summit was hosted by The Yunus Centre and The Grameen Creative Lab under the auspices of the city of Paris from November 4 to 9. Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Professor Muhammad Yunus, banker to the poor and founder of Grameen Bank, is the key ambassador of social business. Through this summit Yunus aims to build an eco-system to support the growth of these new kinds of businesses. Yunus’ belief: “We need to transform this greed based civilization into one based on real human values. We can do it, if only we want to.”
Women on Wings’ and Okhai’s joint mission
Okhai offers handcrafted apparel and lifestyle products created by rural artisans from across India. Since 2016 Women on Wings and Okhai partner in realizing their joint mission to create more employment opportunities for rural women. Recently teams of Women on Wings and Okhai worked together in Ahmedabad on improving Okhai’s supply chain.
Kirti Poonia, CEO at Okhai: “It’s always so important to have an external consultant come in and show you the mirror. That’s exactly what Women on Wings’ supply chain expert Hilke Tol has done. In two days, Hilke transformed the way we do things at Okhai.”
