Hillary Online Community to Foster Female Entrepreneurship Erasmus Project

Project Title

Hillary Online Community to Foster Female Entrepreneurship

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 higher education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2017

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Gender equality / equal opportunities; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; Entrepreneurial learning – entrepreneurship education

Project Summary

CONTEXT.
In 2015, the EU-28 employment rate for recent graduate was 76.9 %, ranging from highs of 90.4 % in Germany and 95.1 % in Malta to lows of 48.5 % in Italy, 65,2% in Spain and 68,1% in Romania. In 2015, the EU-28 employment rate of recent male graduates (78.6 %) was somewhat higher than the rate recorded among recent female graduates (75.3 %) (EUROSTAT, 2016). Recent male graduates in the EU were more likely to find work than their female counterparts. Some of these gender differences may be explained by the nature of studies (fields) that are typically followed by the two sexes (for example, a higher proportion of science and technology students tend to be male) and by differences in labor market demand for graduates with different skills (EUROSTAT, 2015). Furthermore, in OECD economies, one in ten employed women is self-employed, almost half the rate of self-employed men (18%) (“Gender differences in self-employment rates”, in Entrepreneurship at a Glance 2016, OECD Publishing, Paris).

OBJECTIVE.
Hillary has develop an innovative entrepreneurial learning model to foster female entrepreneurship and gender friendly initiatives by female university students attending universities in humanities and arts, education and social science.

TARGET GROUP.
Hillary inspire and support female students close to graduation attending universities in humanities and arts, educational and social science who face serious difficulties in the transition from university to work to develop an entrepreneurial mind-set and attitude. Indeed the project aims at proving them the right business skills and raise awareness about social entrepreneurship and self-employment as potential career option. The indirect target group of the project is instead represented by the university stuff such as professors, researchers and tutors.

ACTIVITIES.
An existing analysis phase was foreseen at the beginning of the project, existing situation analysis, then the project keeps going with the production of a learning path to develop an innovative education model about entrepreneurship which will include the development of an online Hillary community with the content of the training course, a business plan, discussion and members area.

METHOLOGY.
The project was based on a learning by doing approach. In particular, the Hillary online community will allow OPEN and GROUP learning thanks to the active participation of the crowd (professors, external experts, investors) to support and mentor students into the development of their social initiatives creating an engaging system based on crowdsourcing.
In order to achieve its results, the project foresees the participation of 7 participant organizations gathering university students, teachers, researchers and relevant stakeholders such as external experts, investors training centre, incubators, city halls, NGO.

IMPACT.
The project aimed at diminishing the unemployment rate of recent graduates’ students attending non STEM university, and, in particular managed to increase the rate of female self-employment and social entrepreneurship initiatives especially in those countries which are most affected by the economic crisis and have a high rate of female unemployment and a low rate of female self-employment such as Spain, Italy, Romania.

LONG TERM PLAN.
The project fostered self-female entrepreneurial and gender-friendly initiatives which in the long run will allow recent graduates students to easy transit from university to work. Furthermore, the project contributes to boost the employability of woman, especially it is aimed at increasing the percentage of self- employed woman to sustain a smart, sustainable and inclusive growth according to the EUROPE2020 Strategy.

Due to the excelents results and the impact genereted, the team working has started a new organization “Socialenterprise4all” in order to make available and sostenaible the results of the project. So more people can benefy of the Hillary Online Community. It is a non-profit organization whose aim is to develop new project for fostering entrepreneurship competences.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 265595 Eur

Project Coordinator

UNIVERSIDAD DE VALLADOLID & Country: ES

Project Partners

• STICHTING BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT FRIESLAND
• VILNIAUS KOLEGIJA
• EUROCREA MERCHANT SRL
• UNIVERSITY OF GREENWICH
• Babele Create Together SRL
• EUROPEAN CENTRE FOR WOMEN AND TECHNOLOGY (ECWT) FORENING