Using the power of community to fuel the rise of the “mompreneur”.
In 2019, the world came crumbling down for small businesses.
SMBs all over the world were hit hard by lockdowns, but female and minority-led businesses were hit harder than most. According to Facebook’s 2020 State of Small Business report, 66% of female business leaders admitted that additional domestic duties had significantly impacted their work.
In the midst of this crisis, Facebook held a global Hackathon to empower impacted SMBs. As someone who’s passionate about women in business, I knew this was my chance to do more. I formed a core team of creatives and marketers to lead a proactive initiative that focused on female entrepreneurs who carried the largest domestic burdens—moms.
Introducing: Night School, Run by Moms
In the Philippines, we found a thriving community of “mompreneurs” already using Facebook Groups to connect with each other. We partnered with 5 of the largest Groups—with a combined membership of over 500,000 mom business-owners—and on Mother’s Day, we launched a series of educational Facebook Live business classes. Each session was run by a mom, for other moms, and was held at a time that mom business-owners said worked best for them—after their kids went to bed.
With zero budget, and no dedicated time or resources, we begged and borrowed (but drew the line at stealing) to build a campaign landing page that gave mompreneurs all the resources they needed to grow their business.
On the landing page, existing and aspiring mompreneurs had access to a directory of vetted partner Facebook Groups that they could join to learn and grow.
Continue scrolling, and they could find details about upcoming Night School sessions, and even watch the recordings and highlights from sessions that had already passed.
Run by moms, for moms
To celebrate the power of the mompreneur community, we selected a few mom-owned businesses from across APAC to highlight in a short campaign film. Because most APAC markets were still in lockdown, the film was cut together with stills and footage almost entirely shot by the moms themselves, supplemented by some footage our team in Singapore was able to shoot on the ground.