This past week I was thinking about the time I spent in Nepal with Coca- Cola to see the devastation after the earthquake and the global brand’s response to it. The April 2015 4.5 magnitude earthquake upended lives and left cities in rubble. I saw much of it during our travels through Kathmandu and its surrounding towns.
NGOs worked with their partners in the field to provide basic necessities for families, especially women and girls. And, Coca-Cola helped fund programs to empower women’s lives. One such programs I saw was Coca- Cola’s 5×20 program, a global initiative to empower five million women in its supply chain by 2020. Bottlers Nepal Limited committed to empowering 10,000 women in and around Kathmandu to help reach that milestone.
The 5×20 program had a global goal of empowering five million women by 2020. I recently went to see if that goal had been met last year. I was pleased that it had. In fact, Coca-Cola and its partners had helped six million women in 100 different countries reach economic empowerment.
I was happy to see the 5×20 economic empowerment program up close and am happy for the women who now have their own businesses to lean on.
Photos: Jennifer James
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