In September 2017, we partnered with UN Women to become a HeForShe Thematic Champion and pledged to make a tangible difference. We committed to invest US$3 million in programmes that support women and girls in our partner communities; to achieve parity in our leadership appointment rate by 2020 and to ensure that we were a positive force for gender equality through our marketing campaigns.
Our colleagues across world and at every level of leadership united behind these commitments. Driven by their energy we reached our goals by the end of 2020. In March 2021, we extended our partnership with UN Women for a further five-years, joining the HeForShe Alliance and expanding our commitments as part of our journey towards our Building Forever 2030 goals.
This included committing to increase the representation of women in technical roles and leadership and promoting a culture that enables our journey to achieving gender parity by 2030; as well as investing US$3 million to expand our AWOME (Accelerating Women-Owned Micro-Enterprises) programme as part of our goal of supporting 10,000 women entrepreneurs by 2030.