Today, March 8th 2021, is International Women’s Day. A day dedicated to celebrating the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women.
This year, we couldn’t think of anyone better to highlight than a woman who rises up to the challenges of the corporate world. Editor and Founder of Woman to Woman Magazine, Rosalind Kwinje. Rosalind celebrates women in all spheres all year round with this one of a kind publication in Botswana media.
1: Tell us about Woman to Woman Magazine
Woman to Woman is a local, high-value business publication that focuses on women here in Botswana: The corporate roles we carry and the impact we’re making in business, culture and society.
Our publication is bi-monthly and speaks to a valued female reader aged between 25 and 65 years in various industrial and commercial sectors. A middle to high-income earner, established and upstanding as a professional, entrepreneur, business owner, corporate leader, community leader, and role model.
As well as the emerging or aspiring young woman, who’s set to make her own mark in and through Botswana’s actively inclusive socio-economic development.
2: What do you hope to achieve through the magazine?
The magazine exists as a source of inspiration and knowledge to women, young and old.
Through the magazine, we help women with ideas for business startups or on their journeys in business, education and other disciplines they’re passionate about.
The publication helps in raising awareness on issues like health, rape and gender-based violence.
Our Motto is, “Thari Ya Sechaba”, which means that a woman ties the nation to her back. When women are empowered, the nation is strengthened.
Q3: How are you able to achieve your goals for the magazine?
The Woman to Woman team is committed, and they always give and put extra effort into making sure that we live up to our values. Whilst maintaining our status as a high-value publication.
Through our united and consented efforts as a team, we manage to accomplish all that we set out to achieve. It’s through this that we’ve managed to get support from different corporates such as Spar and Nashua to host our events.
We host two main events. A networking event called the Power Business Breakfast where we invite the women featured in an antecedent issue of the magazine, our corporate sponsors as well as women from all walks of life get to attend. We also have men attending these events as support.
The second event is a 10-lesson Golf Coaching Program which we recently launched in partnership with Excel Golf Academy.
The initiative is part of our shared interest and endeavour in promoting and supporting women. We use golf as a sport to help us as women to stay fit, as well as enhance our value as corporate women through networking.
4: Is there a bigger vision for Woman to Woman magazine
The bigger vision for the publication is to go regional and then international.
We would love to build training centres for women. Where they can be trained in the skills of their choice.
In future, we’d also love to establish safe homes for abused and abandoned women and girls. Protecting and empowering the girl child from a young age is important. As the saying goes, “little girls with dreams become women with vision.”
5: Tell us about the period from when you first had the idea to start a women’s magazine until you had the first issue in your hands.
I was inclined to start the publication when I realised that there wasn’t a publication that solely spoke to women. A publication that talked about women’s issues as well as showcasing women’s achievements across all sectors of the economy.
The idea materialized in 2015 when l was a lecturer at GIPS. l would sneak out from work to consult veteran journalist, John Churu, on how to start a publication.
Woman to Woman was registered that same year. We started operation then, and have been running till today.
6: The Women’s Day theme this year is “Choose to Challenge”. We’re sure that you face many challenges. How do these challenges awaken you to the issues women are facing in the home, society and the workplace?
The biggest challenge that we face as a publication is raising funds and rallying the support we need to stay in operation. These are not unique to us but shared by many businesswomen.
We rely on paid adverts and due to the pandemic and the adverse implications on businesses, we’ve faced a major blow.
A number of small to medium companies, especially businesses run by women, have had to shut down because they couldn’t cope up with the grim effects of the pandemic.
We’re really grateful and appreciative of the support we’re getting from other corporates.
Another challenge is a lack of confidence in some women to come out and showcase their achievements. Some are afraid to publicly discuss issues such as rape and gender-based violence.
7: Were there any tough decisions you had to make that helped you overcome these challenges? What lessons did you learn from them?
The toughest decision we’ve had to make was to remain in operations through very tough times. The lesson drawn here is to be resilient and to keep your eyes on the vision.
8: What’s been your biggest highlight since the launch of the magazine?
The biggest highlight of the magazine so far was having the First Lady, Mma Masisi, on the cover of our magazine.
She joined our Women’s Power Breakfast along with a host of women featured in the issue foregoing the event.
The vision is to have more events that empower women with knowledge to help them in their day-to-day lives.
Join Woman To Woman BW today on their webinar discussing the theme “Women in leadership: Achieving an equal future in a COVID19 World.” For more information contact 74 358 955.
Thank you Rosalind for having a chat with us, we are cheering you on and rallying right beside you!
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