#ConnectedWomen: how tech allows women to stay in the PHL and start their own business

While traveling and shooting for a food documentary series, I met a lot of restaurant and local delicacy owners in the provinces. Most of them were women, matriarchs who, wanting to augment their husbands’ income and provide a better future for their families, started their businesses right out of their homes. 

With determination and grit, these matriarchs have grown their once backyard projects into full-blown businesses with several locations and/or becoming suppliers to businesses in Metro Manila and even abroad.

It struck me how these women, already preoccupied with running their households and raising their kids, can manage to roll up their sleeves and take risks in business. I knew then that women make good entrepreneurs. They’re good at budgeting, they can multi-task, and they do things with a lot of heart.

Fast-forward to present and a new wave of entrepreneurship is happening, thanks to technology. These days, women are empowered to become entrepreneurs and self-employed workers and freelancers, affording them flexibility and mobility.

This is what inspired Gina Romero, a Filipina born in the Philippines, raised in the UK and until recently, an expat in Singapore, to create Connected Women.

Gina Romero, the founder of Connected Women

Connectivity and Connection

Connected Women is a lot of things. Essentially, it’s a job-matching platform that connects busy professionals from abroad to Filipino virtual assistants. 

Connected Women is also a social enterprise that conducts digital skills training to bring women’s business ideas to life. In partnership with Facebook’s initiative #SheMeansBusiness and the Department of Information and Communication Technology (DICT), Connected Women has finished six workshops in Manila, Cebu, Davao, Iloilo and Legazpi. 

Most importantly, it’s a community of women entrepreneurs, freelancers and self-employed professionals where they can share their stories, collaborate in projects and network. 

Gina Romero, formerly an executive of Athena Network in Singapore, recognizes the importance of building communities of women working together to reach common goals.

What makes it more impactful is that Gina Romero has a very deep and personal reason for pursuing this “really impossible, ridiculous” project. Gina is a daughter of an OFW domestic worker in UK.

“I wanted to come back to the Philippines to help Filipino women use technology so they can work online and they don’t have to go abroad,” Gina says at a Connected Women: Pasig Chapter meet-up where around 20 Filipina entrepreneurs and freelancers were present. 

At the recent Connected Women Pasig meetup

Gina has long been playing with this idea in her head. She and her husband were living comfortable expat lives in Singapore and one day, she just decided to go for it. Within days, they were back in the Philippines.

“You know those things you want ticked off before you do crazy things like that? You want your kids to be finished with school, you want savings in the bank, all of these grown-up responsible things you should have done before you actually do a crazy thing. Well, entrepreneurs are not like that. You have this vision. You know you can’t contain it. You just have to do it. And you know what, life’s too short,” Romero adds.

Many of the attendees nod, with most of them having just left the rat race or corporate jobs not too long ago to pursue really ridiculous, impossible ideas.

Enterprising women

The Connected Women meet-up served as a platform for these women to share their stories and network for future collaborations.

At first, I attended mostly because I was intrigued but now, I'm loving it. And in fact, I am told I am good at it.

And also because I am like them. I’ve long given up the 9-5.

READ: Going freelance after working for 15 years as a full-time employee

There's Tet Barin who was working in a call center for 17 years when she was retrenched. She took it as a sign and now she runs her organic soap business called Green Magic Organics, which she markets and manages mostly online.

“I’m able to save on operational costs. I don’t need a physical store. Because of this, I get to sell my products at affordable prices,” Tet says.

Beng Girang was holding a corporate job for ten years when she started a sideline of printing business cards, flyers, shirts, everything that can be printed. A mother of three, she took a long deep breath, handed her resignation and started running CTG Prints Enterprise full-time.

“It’s just easier now to run a business. Anytime and anywhere I can communicate with prospective clients, send cost estimates, process job orders, as long as I have Internet connection,” says Beng who enjoys the challenge of being an entrepreneur.

There was one who runs both a co-working space and a book-keeping and accounting company, another who ran a sanitizing cleaning service, a meat delivery service, and a small neighborhood coffee shop in Pasig. There were also freelancers like me – a producer, life coach, a web designer, a virtual assistant and an NGO worker.

These are enterprising women who took a leap of faith to become their own boss. It’s not for everyone, but with a woman’s instincts, business-savvy, technology skills, passion and a risk-taking attitude, anything is possible. — LA, GMA News

The Connected Women platform will to be launched in July.