Origin of B.R.I.M

The idea was mooted in our EXCO meeting on May 4, 2018, afternoon, at a cafe outside Singapore National Library, Central branch.

The team, which consist of women entrepreneurs in the industry inclusive of event organisers, coaches, psychologists, sales and marketing, and business consultants, etc, had reflected about specialties and the set of strengths of the individual board members from different walks of life to come up with the idea of the B.R.I.M series. Note that B.R.I.M topic workshops were already running as part of other events hitherto, but we felt that it can be created as a standalone movement.

We notice that even though Singapore is a first world nation, we are still facing gender bias and role typecasting, where there are lesser women in corporate boards and females still take up a bigger share of taking care of the family. We are able to empower females who aspires to step up an avenue to gain not just interface with commerce and industry, but in a holistic manner to effect a sustainable change in their lives.

With the key strengths identified from within, the team is highly confident of delivering the B.R.I.M initiative at a high quality relative to other similar female-focused organisations. We look inwards to give outwards.

Our Key Value Proposition

The B.R.I.M initiative is a series of workshops, seminars and social networking sessions focused at empowering the attendees holistically, in areas pertaining to Business, Relationship, Image, Mental Wellness. These four (4) board categories basically cover a woman from top to toe, from inside to outside. It is spelled as BRIM as we want to give value to our members so that they are brimming with positivity and knowledge.

The Board of Directors have identified out strengths in our professional lives we can add value to empowering women. Some specific titles our board directors carry are image consultant to certified psychologist, play therapist, life coach, event management company CEO, etc. Hence from our collective set of skills and expertise, we came up with tangible areas of engagement that we believe can substantially improve the lives of those we touched.

We want to encourage more female entrepreneurs to step forward and we create learning systems to build an ecosystem that female entrepreneurs at all stages of business will be able to thrive. We further create platforms and activate levers necessary to build a balanced life desired for the new era female entrepreneur.

How is B.R.I.M useful to you?

This initiative provides an avenue to outreach to women in the community while empowering them with soft and hard skills, and a platform to build and showcase their business. This include engaging already successful women who wish to give back to society, as well as women in need like single mothers, sick and others.

We encourage the sharing of experiences and we collect feedback on common issues that require a visit at policies and enablers to resolve, then engage relevant parties to provide inputs for a sustainable solution.

The psychologists, therapists and coaches on our board can come in to offer emotional support and can step in to offer active advice and care to women in need. At the end of the day, we want to help women to stand up on their own feet and carve a space in the world for themselves.

How different is B.R.I.M from existing initiatives?

As the organisation name International Women Federation of Commerce and Industry (IWFCI), we focus on empowering women in the field of commerce and industry by creating platforms like marketplace and international trade summits etc to promote female entrepreneurship.

B.R.I.M differs from other existing initiatives because it focus more on the psychosocial engagement of the self, where reflection and inner work is prioritised as much as the outer work and hard skills.

As we focus on the strength of our board, we are able to move beyond communal and societal rhetoric to allow change to start from internally to externally, to effect a complete and coherent improvement of the lives we touch.