Women empowerment and their participation in socio-economic activities and entrepreneurship are imperative to make development and to compete with the rest of the world.

Women empowerment and their participation in socio-economic activities and entrepreneurship are imperative to make development and to compete with the rest of the world. This was stated by University of Agriculture Faisalabad Vice Chancellor Dr Muhammad Iqbal Zafar while addressing the inauguration ceremony of third batch of women entrepreneurship course under women entrepreneurship development program. The event was organized by Office of Research, Innovation and Commercialization, UAF. He said that more than 75 percent of women in the country are not involved in economic activities. He said that women need to work on the ground to become entrepreneurs despite having huge potential in our society. He said that it is essential to be skilled to fight the challenges of the modern. The rural women are oppressed segment of the society, he said, adding that if they develop the entrepreneurial skill, they can overcome the poverty and lead to a prosperous country. He said the empowerment of the women was vital to achieve the dream of development. The women constitute more than 50 percent of the total population. Talking about the education, he said that women enrolment in the graduate programmes at the campus has touched to 50 percent. He said that if we teach a woman we teach a family. He said that there was the need to create the awareness among the people about girls’ education. He added that the university was making all out efforts to provide the modern facilties to the students. ORIC Director Dr Zahir Ahmad Zahir stressed upon the need become innovative as it works as lifeblood of economy. He said that such platform gives opportunity to the women to polish their skills in the entrepreneurship. He said that value addition in the food industry would bring open up new window of development and prosperity. He said that women participation in the socio economic activities would help address the different challenges. He said that in the first two batch 40 women are trained who are running their business successful. Program Coordinator Hania Mudassor said that they program will impart the 3.5 month business education to the women. After that business education, the soft skills, peer group sessions will be organized. She said that in the modern era, only those economics were flourishing which is knowledge based. She said that women participation in entrepreneurship will help them to make their live economical better. In charge Institute of Business Administration, UAF Dr Abdul Ghafoor, Dr Hammad Badar, Dr Mubashar Mehdi, Dr Abdul Naveed, Dr Waseem Ahmad, Dr Abdul Rasheed, Dr Kurrum Zia, Dr Farooq Hassan, Dr Burhan and others attended the meeting.