Canon Middle East's Women Who Empower Program To Support Women-Owned Creative Brands
Canon Middle East aims to address gender inequality in business with its year-long Women Who Empower program.
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Canon Middle East's newly-launched Women Who Empower program invites women across creative industries in the Middle East, Central and North Africa, and Turkey regions to showcase their projects, while also highlighting what challenges they face in growing their initiatives.
With submissions now open, interested applicants are required to upload a photo or a minute-long video that highlights the originality of their work, and add a caption which explains the hurdles they are facing in building and scaling their creative brands. These can be uploaded on any of Canon Middle East's three social media pages -@CanonMEA on Twitter, @CanonMiddleEast on Facebook, and @canonme on Instagram- while using the hashtags #ChooseToChallenge, #WomenWhoEmpower and #CanonME.
The Women Who Empower program has four main pillars, each of which has been assigned to a female experts in a creative field, including Women with a Vision led by Saudi photographer, artist and Canon ambassador Tasneem Alsultan, Women with a Passion led by painter and artist Gehan Fawzi, Women with a Story headed by art director, fashion photographer and Canon Ambassador Menna Hossam, and Women with a Voice will be led by a lifestyle editor and journalist.
These four creative experts will initially judge the photos and videos submitted under each of the four pillars, and subsequently choose one woman to be featured each month while also providing mentorship and support from Canon.
The program builds upon this year's International Women's Day theme of #ChooseToChallenge campaign that saw people across the globe pose for photos with one hand held high to show their commitment to challenging gender inequality, calling out gender biases and questioning stereotypes against women.
"In celebration of the International Women's Day and in support of this year's campaign themed #ChooseToChallenge, Canon Middle East shares the same view of encouraging women to speak about their challenges as well as celebrate their achievements," said Mai Youssef, Canon Middle East's Corporate Communications and Marketing Services Director (META). "There are countless unknown artists and creative designers who deserve to be recognized and be supported in the challenges they face as they work to create something unique for the world to see. We hope to give them a chance and voice through this campaign."
Source: Canon Middle East
Through this campaign, Canon Middle East aims to directly aid and support women in creative fields by enabling them to cater to greater audiences and also build their brands.
The program is all set to build on Canon Middle East's SHERise program, which was launched in 2020 to provide inspirational talks from female leaders within the organization, and also provide training, mentoring and feedback sessions, to help promote, support and empower women in the workplace. Both programs have been led by the firm's corporate philosophy Kyosei which means living and working together for the common good, and under the respect for humanity pillar.
Related: Why Gender Equality And Women-Centric Policies Make Good Business Sense
