Admiring Inspirational Women
The Gamini Corea Foundation (GCF), which is being a research institute focusing on critical socioeconomic issues, launched the Freda Corea Awards (FCA) scheme in 2023 to pay tribute to Mrs. Freda Corea, Dr. Gamani Corea’s mother. The main objective of this scheme is to reward the inspirational female entrepreneurs across the country, who have contributed not only to uplift the living standards of their families but also to national development. The main focus of the project was “Women’s Empowerment”.
The inspirational women were selected for their roles in the following categories:
- Family Emancipation: This category focused on contemporary homemakers who had undergone unsurmountable hardship and overcome great challenges, and who have a success story to share.
- Entrepreneurship: Women who have achieved considerable success in the Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) sector through their creativity, and determination. This sector highlighted contemporary entrepreneurs who have started with minimal capital investment and managed to reach greater heights in terms of product development, business acumen, job creation, Forex income, eco-friendliness, and novelty.
- Exceptional Achievement: Attracting fame and global recognition The main focus of this category was on those who excelled in science, technology, and innovation (STI), sports, arts, defense, education, or any other notable field. This section’s focus was local or international recognition gained by overcoming obstacles problems and
The FCA was conceptualized as a competition for story writers and was conducted at the provincial level The task of the story writers was to identify women, whose success would inspire others to follow in their footsteps. This project helped to collect vital research findings regarding the problems, obstacles, and challenges faced by low and middle-income level women and how they overcame them in their journey towards empowerment.
The GCF awarded 44 winners comprising 22 inspirational women and 22 story writers from the 9 provinces at the FCA ceremony-2023 held at the BMICH on 15th February 2024.