Healthier integration of micro-entrepreneurs via support of Mentoring Erasmus Project

Project Title

Healthier integration of micro-entrepreneurs via support of Mentoring

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for adult education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2020

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Open and distance learning; Enterprise, industry and SMEs (incl. entrepreneurship); Gender equality / equal opportunities

Project Summary

As the Social Counselor Hiila O’Brien declared that trained immigrant women can act as bridge builders in a globalizing world. Finns get a lot of new perspectives on their work from immigrants and learn new customs and culture. At the same time, the Finnish cultural and international vision will be developing further. Moreover immigrants, especially women, still face difficulties in finding employment (https://goo.gl/AeM7E8). Although there are no specific statistics explaining the detailed picture of gender imbalance of migrant owned SMEs, one could imagine that the situation is not better than globally existing from immigrant women point of view.

i-Mentor project targets to improve gender balance and reduce the gender gap of immigrant women owned businesses; promoting the empowerment of immigrant women via supporting/strengthening their small/micro businesses with the mentoring support of i-Mentors, by developing a systematic approach to introduce business angel model oriented mentoring concept; aiming to e-train and e- guide those immigrant women-owned SMEs, based on supplying more enhanced initial and continuous training for those who would have proper background and talent, and want to be a mentor for women in work-based environment.

In recognition of the prevalence of this gender imbalance (5th goal) and sustainable economic growth (8th goal), the 193 members of the United Nations General Assembly adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which came into force on January 1, 2016 (https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/sustainable-development-goals/); it was declared as the global gender pay gap stands at 23% globally and without decisive action, it will take another 68 years to achieve equal pay. Women’s labor force participation rate is 63% while that of men is 94% .

i-Mentor has been designed for supporting the Europe’s need in this gender balance efforts, in parallel to above mentioned UN’s 2030 Agenda and also EC initiatives regarding to supporting SMEs’ growth (https://ec.europa.eu/growth/smes/support/networks_en) by establishing many networks and support channels; consequently bringing a new e-VET based approach, supporting the creation of new vocation, business angel model based mentoring and tackling the problem via this channel.

For this purpose, i-Mentor will perform:

– business life (small/micro) & mentoring practical multi-level e-learning “content need” analysis, by holding practical and intelligent surveys by the aid of partner women NGOs and SMEs, as well as rest of VET and R/D performer partners, in all project countries,
– Develop multi-level business life & mentoring e-learning and e-guiding platform for mentees and mentors,
– Test the whole system, including mentor-mentee relations extending to business angel model, individual information seekers responses, e-guiding performance by using intelligent and interactive feedback toolkit,
– Optimize the overall system by using the continuous feedback and include both volunteer and business angel based model mentors for better sustainability of the complete i-Mentor system; and finally justify the new mentoring model’s efficiency.

At the end of the performance, we expect to end up with a working and more efficient mentoring model supporting immigrant women owned small/micro businesses and seeing both target groups benefiting from the result both from business and self-development perspectives.

The partnership has been established to be able to realize all this i-Mentor environment as:

– TAITAJA [FI] – Finnish adult VET body,
– LEEAN [FI] – business life and entrepreneur migrant women owned SME, expert in mentoring,
– HSE [FI] – migrant women owned SME, expert in business life,
– ZARIF[SK], TAKIDD [TR] – Women NGOs having direct access to target groups from different backgrounds, various expertise including mentoring,
– FFE [ES] – VET and entrepreneurship training,
– POINT [TR] – R/D performing SME expert in mentoring and development of e-Learning infrastructures as well as e-VET,
– AHBV [TR] and WSEI [PL] – Universities having also various business mentoring and start-up support networks in Europe wide,
– CTCP [PT] – Chamber, great feedback and quality system developers.

where gender imbalance is at around average rate of Europe regarding to employment in general (66.5/78.0=17.29%imbalance), including the total immigrant women in 2017 (Female/Male in percent), except Finland performing a better picture and Turkey being at much more higher rate:

Finland 72.4/75.9 (4.83% imbalance), Poland 63.6/78.2 (22.96%), Portugal 69.8/77.3 (10.75%), Slovakia 64.7/77.5 (19.78%), Spain 59.6/71.5 (19.97%) and Turkey 34.5/76.1 (120.58%).

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 304475 Eur

Project Coordinator

Kouvolan Ammattiopisto Oy & Country: FI

Project Partners

• FONDO FORMACION EUSKADI SLL
• Wyzsza Szkola Ekonomii i Informatyki w Krakowie
• Zdruzenie aktivnych a talentovanych zien realizujucich fungujucu karieru – ZARIF
• TUM AVRUPA KADINLARI KULTUREL ISBIRLIGI VE DAYANISMA DERNEGI
• Leean Trade Oy
• POINT PROJE INSAAT TAAHHUT MUHENDISLIK VE TICARET LIMITED SIRKETI
• Hongwen Sun Europe Oy