Women’s Entrepreneurship CoAches traiNing Erasmus Project

Project Title

Women’s Entrepreneurship CoAches traiNing

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 2019

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Gender equality / equal opportunities; Social entrepreneurship / social innovation; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses

Project Summary

The 2008 crisis and the austerity measures taken afterwards have caused high unemployment rates in the European economies. Still today the group aged 30-45 is facing the main barriers to (re)enter the labour market. The challenge for these adults out of employment is to generate a new kind of growth that embraces entrepreneurship as a way to create innovative and competitive jobs. EU Member States need to consider new entrepreneurs as huge potential incubators of creative and innovative ideas that can lead to job creation, lower unemployment rates and better social and economic integration. In this framework, women’s entrepreneurial activity in Europe has not yet reached its full potential. The Women Entrepreneurship Report published by the Global entrepreneurship monitor for the years 2016/2017 shows that women face additional hurdles with respect to men and that these barriers restrain women’s success in entrepreneurial activities. Generally, women’s enterprises have lower growth expectations and higher rates of discontinuance than men in EU countries. Support for newly established businesses, mentoring, education and training are important tools to sustain women entrepreneurial activities; especially entrepreneurial education has become an important priority for the EU since it creates new companies and jobs, opens up new markets, improves productivity and creates wealth. WECAN addresses entrepreneurship as a key competence to both start up a business and create value as described by the EntreComp framework. The project aims at enhancing women’s positive perceptions of their skills to start a new business through a coaching journey in which coaches with relevant entrepreneurial experience will explain what it actually takes to be an entrepreneur.

WECAN will boost women’s entrepreneurial capacity, empowering the would-be entrepreneurs or those with a newly established business with a tailored coaching programme. The specific objectives of the project are to:
• Develop basic and transversal entrepreneurial skills, using a tailored coaching programme
• Increase the sense of initiative and entrepreneurial mindset among female adults would-be or young entrepreneurs
• Promote unconventional and informal learning to build self-confidence, brake barriers and empower female adults out of employment
• Develop a coaching programme that enhances both coaches and mentees, developing new and creative tools that will improve the learning experience of the mentee and the coaching skills of experienced female entrepreneurs
• An open European education and training area thanks to the use of innovative ICT, open educational resources (OER) within the e-platform that will be freely available.

The targeted participants are:
WECoaches (peer coaches): Adult female entrepreneurs with at least one year of relevant experience who are willing to upskill and upgrade themselves and become coaches of other peer women and who will take part to the training in Palermo (18)
Adult women out of employment or overqualified for the jobs they are currently performing and willing to start-up a new business or acquire relevant market-oriented entrepreneurial skills to create value and (re)enter the labour market being empowered, without fears and self-confident. Three per partner will be coached after C1 in the national training pilots.
Tutors, trainers and counsellors who have experience at various levels in providing non-formal learning in partners’ context.

The activities of the project include:
Development of a Methodological Toolkit to Coach on breaking the fears to start the Entrepreneurial Journey
Development of a Curriculum Programme with 4 training modules:
– Overcoming Challenges faced by Women Entrepreneurs
– Developing Business Models with Lean and Agile tools
– Communication, networking and selling
– Social Entrepreneurship
Testing the training materials in a Lean Entrepreneur Interactive Programme (LEIP) in Palermo with 18 coaches
National training pilots with 18 mentees in each partner organisation
Development of the e-Learning Program based on the Pilot Training and Test by the WECoaches
Dissemination, including workshops with stakeholders and a closure conference
Activities related to Quality Assurance, Evaluation, Exploitation and Sustainability of WECAN outcomes.

The expected results are:
The WECAN methodological guide for coaching adult women in sense of initiative and entrepreneurship
The WECAN Curriculum Programme with Innovative training materials
WECAN e-Learning Pack an e-learning platform that will offer the wider community access to follow the course and get all the knowledge developed plus a diploma

WECAN will increase quality Adult Education provision to adult women out of employment thanks to an innovative coaching programme that will equip new coaches with updated and relevant methods and tool to support, empower and encourage female entrepreneurial activity.

Project Website

http://www.wecanproject.eu/index.php/en/

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 174512 Eur

Project Coordinator

EUROCIRCLE ASSOCIATION & Country: FR

Project Partners

• GREEK ASSOCIATION OF WOMEN ENTREPRENEURS – SEGE
• CENTRO PER LO SVILUPPO CREATIVO DANILO DOLCI
• CSI CENTER FOR SOCIAL INNOVATION LTD
• Center for Knowledge Management
• I BOX CREATE, SOCIEDAD LIMITADA