Mastercard, UN Women Singapore launch Project Inspire

The year-long digital and social media initiative is called 'Project Inspire: Five minutes to change the world', and aims to connect and inspire 18 to 35 year-olds to share their visions of a better world for disadvantaged women and children in Asia-Pacific, Middle East and Africa.

"Instead of doing a talk, panel discussion or gala dinner, we wanted to reach out to the youth in a dynamic fashion," says Trina Liang-Lin, president of  UN Women Singapore, of the initiative that marks the centennial of International Women's Day. This is the first time that UN Women Singapore has utilise social media to engage youths. Submissions begin 8 March, to coincide with International Women's Day.

The initiative targets young graduates and those who are pursuing their MBAs. The website 5minutestochangetheworld.org encourages individuals or teams of three who have a passion to make a difference to submit a five-minute video or a two-page writeup about their life-changing ideas, and how they will use the US$25,000 grant prize to implement the idea. Two winners will be selected - one for the US$25,000 grant for the best economic empowerment, skills development, financial inclusion, health or social entrepreneurship idea, and a US$10,000 for the best financial literacy/ livelihood project.

Poject Inspire supports the need to devote resources to the empowerment of women, as statistics show that women account for 70 per cent of the world's poor.

As part of the initiative, Mastercard rolled out a financial literacy index that measured how money-savvy women across Asia are. "The financial literacy index is to find out how women manage their money. With money comes independence and empowerment," says Georgette Tan, VP of communications for Asia Pacific, Middle East & Africa at MasterCard Worldwide.

Taking in account three factors - basic money management, long-term financial planning and investments, the study found that across 14 countries in Asia-Pacific, Thai women were the most financial literate, followed by New Zealand, Australia and Vietnam.  Singapore ranked fifth. Korean women were the least financial literate, followed by Japan, China and India.

UN Women Singapore intends to reach out to the public by means of their network, as well as through their INSEAD and Bain & Company's mailing lists, as well as 1,000 universities across the world. Singapore's free-to-air Channel News Asia will also film and broadcast the winner's journey.