Blog Post

Covid-19: an opportunity to grow together

Dorángela Giraldo • 28 April 2020

Taking positive actions in difficult times

This period of time has pushed and challenged us to try new things, to rethink our businesses, and to generate new ways to sell our ideas, services or products.

I am writing this article with mixed emotions. Despite all of the pain, uncertainty and negative things that are happening in the world, we, as International Creative Women have tried to face these times as an opportunity for learning from each other and for improving as human beings and entrepreneurs.

Personally, I am happy with the results of this powerful community of women. That’s why I am sharing my emotions here, so maybe this can inspire more people as much as it inspires me. I take the liberty to write this, using the feedback and comments that I have been reading daily in social media or those at the end of an online workshop or other online sessions.

The conclusion is: This period of time has pushed and challenged us to try new things, to rethink our businesses, and to generate new ways to sell our ideas, services or products. We have many beautiful examples of this! I hope that the ladies in the community can add their own personal feedback with experiences and insights to complement my findings.

One of the great results of this is the Let’s Spring Together - online market. Our first online market, where we seek to connect all of our online resources to support businesses and above all, take a new risk, do something new and learn from it.

Those of you who already know us, notice that every year, we prepare between 3 - 4 markets to promote face to face interaction of entrepreneurs’ businesses. However, with the current social gathering restrictions, we were motivated to try something new: to keep our promise to the community and to make our event “Lets Spring Together—online version”

This idea has been a beautiful adventure... in this moment I have a big smile on my face, this gives me an immense satisfaction. I hope that when you read this, you can feel my emotion and that you will smile too. I will try to describe how we have experienced this journey. Maybe it will make it easier for you to understand the emotion that I want to share with you.

The story of this journey

Everything started with the frustration of having everything planned, with investments and the need to cancel everything because we can't do public events. Fortunately, the organizing team of International Creative Women always maintains a positive vibe and even though the investments came from our own contribution, we did not give this fact much importance: “Don't worry, queens, we'll figure out something else” *. The most important thing is to follow the recommendations, take care of ourselves and take care of the people.

The second step was to implement the well-being weeks. The talented women of our community are exceptional. The implications of the lock down and social isolation were an opportunity for human science professionals to come together and try to take care of people's psychological health.

That's how we started our well-being weeks program, were little by little, women from other professions joined us, motivated to help people to deal in the best way during these times.

Alongside, we planned daily challenges. This might sound a little romantic, but it was our strategy to invite people to start doing useful things during this period of social isolation... I can remember my husband's happy face seeing that I was engaged 24 hours a day, and not complaining about the hair that our dog leaves very second on the floor. The daily challenges took my mind off it.

With the well-being weeks program and the daily challenges, we were able to connect people from different countries in the same space and with the same purpose. In the end, this challenge of physical social isolation made us seek different ways to keep us connected. This was the perfect opportunity to open our borders...Isn’t it incredible? When countries are closing physical borders, we are opening them and connecting with people across the globe.

Another beautiful event that I should include here, is the digital transformation of several entrepreneurs. During last two weeks there are 5 entrepreneurs have set up their own webshop and other ones working on that. Other entrepreneurs are working on their business social media and researching about other new technologies to participate in the current market… Other of the consequences of these time: a push to take the step forward to digital transformation.

And now, what do we do with this? what if an online market could also open the borders of entrepreneurs?

Although the online market will take place next weekend, and it has not passed yet, we already have positive results. We have already expanded our borders.

Together we have created this new concept and together we are helping each other to change the way people sell products and services. As always, we are positively expecting the results of the Online market next weekend. We only need your help so that this result will be much more positive that it already is

The journey is not over yet, so far, we are packing our bags, filling them with dreams and wishes so that the end of this trip will be a magnificent experience. Who are the passengers? Everyone: the community of entrepreneurs, you as a buyer, or as a follower of our steps, our families as a support system, and the entities that believe in our ideas. And, just like us, want to positively impact the internationals that come to the region.

Thank you for helping local businesses, and especially the businesses of our International Creative Women.

Follow us on social media. This ensures that you can keep up to date with Let's pring together market information, entrepreneurs network and special deals.

Note: Our flyer has enmended the dates. This is because we had already all promotional material for our physical event. Now we are reusing those resources and challenging ourselves to respond to the world situation.

* "Queen" is a Colombian expression between women, which contains affection and admiration between us.

Dorángela Giraldo Arana is one of the ICW ambassadors, Psychologist and Life Coach. Although she is not an entrepreneur with a business at ICW, she is behind the strategies, event organization, community structure and of course the co-creation process.

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