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UPOWER

Unlocking the POtential of Women in social EntRepreneurship

Women constitute 52% of the total European population, but just one third of the EU self-employed and of the start-up entrepreneurs. Starting a business or deciding to become self-employed appears to be a rather masculine prerogative and projections reveal that pre-existing gender gaps in the labour market, and in particular in entrepreneurship, will be amplified by the COVID-19 pandemic. The low spread of female entrepreneurs is due to the great number of barriers that women are facing in establishing and running businesses, such as socio-cultural barriers (e.g. prejudices and stereotypes), difficulties related to reconciling work and family life and to the access to credit, lack of access to lifelong learning education and training opportunities for the development of entrepreneurship key competence and business skills. Moreover, women lack role models in schools and universities and have few women in their first work experience placements to serve as mentors. Additionally, a report entitled “Activist to entrepreneur: the role of social enterprise in supporting women’s empowerment”, commissioned by the British Council, points out that there is an apparent connection between social enterprise and women’s empowerment. This report has shown that social enterprise holds great potential as a tool for enabling women’s empowerment. Specifically it is used to support women’s empowerment in four powerful ways:

As a source of funding for women’s rights;

As a means to deliver training or employment opportunities for women;

 As a way to create economic empowerment for women through micro-entrepreneurship;

 By providing affordable products and services for women.

 

Start date :  01/09/2022                      End date : 31/08/2024

Project Reference:

EU Grant: 250 000,00 €

Programme: Erasmus+

Key Action: KA220-ADU – Cooperation partnerships in adult education

Action Type: Adult education

 

Project Partners:

  • MEATH COMMUNITY RURAL AND SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT PARTNERSHIP LIMITED ,Ireland
  • NGO NEST Berlin , Germany
  • TANDEM PLUS, France
  • QUALITY CULTURE SRLS, Italy
  • LATVIJAS ASOCIACIJA EIROPAS KOPIENAS STUDIJAM , Latvia
  • ASOCIACION EDUCATIVA POR LA INTEGRACION Y LA IGUALDAD ,Spain
  • Jinishian Memorial Foundation, Armenia

Project TOPICs:

 

TARGET GROUPs

Main target groups:

  1. Women, with a particular focus on those who are 25-55 years old, including those with fewer opportunities and who are facing difficulties, such as reconciling work and personal life and socio-cultural barriers.
  2. Adult educators and trainers, belonging to partner organizations and external adult education organizations, interested in acquiring new methodologies to support women in starting their own business, in particular the blended approach developed and tested within the project. Other target groups
  3. Female entrepreneurs, who want to provide best practices and can take part to the project activities as mentors and/or success stories, inspiring participants and giving positive examples of female social entrepreneurship;
  4. Adult education organizations that deal with social entrepreneurship, support to women or coaching/mentoring for vulnerable groups;
  5. Local, national and international policy makers;
  6. General public.

 

PROJECT’S OBJECTIVES

  • strengthen the adult education sector providing coaching skills and competences for adult educators to effectively support women in an entrepreneurship path through a blended approach
  • provide women with skills and competences for a successful career development with a strong focus on social entrepreneurship
  • increase awareness among women, adult educators and, especially, policy makers on the challenge of gender equality and the importance of female empowerment and social entrepreneurship

 

APPROACH / METHODOLOGY

 

Project Activities

– research analysis to acquire information on female social entrepreneurship and gender gap

– development and piloting of a blended approach (MOOC+coaching)

– consultation and dialogue workshops to collect feedback for the development of policy recommendations

– communication and dissemination activities to reach the target groups and promote the project’s activities and results