Today, the global economic, social and technological developments need women to take more active roles in labour market. Although women constitute half of the population in the world, they are not enough represented in the labour market and this is a serious loss in terms of human resources. According to Entrepeneurship Analytical report 2010 of Europen Comission, only % 12 of EU citizens have entrepeneurship activities and only % 39 of this rate constitutes women.
VšĮ Inovacijų biuras (Innovation Office) together with partners from Ireland, Italy, Greece, United Kingdom, Turkey and Gemany is implementing Erasmus+ strategic partnership for adult education project “Empowering Women from ethnic minorities through Social Enterprise” (EMwoSE).
Considering these data, EMwoSE project replies to the following needs:
1) women from ethnic minorities need to be aware of the successful women entrepreneurs as role examples to increase their self-confidence;
2) trainers and business advisors need innovative and adapted methodologies to transfer entrepreneurship skills to women from ethnic minorities taking into consideration the cultural barriers;
3) women from ethnic minorities and trainers/business advisors need to have easy access to open educational resources online in order to empower themselves according to their needs and their interests.
Considering these needs, the project aims at increasing the employment of women from ethnic minorities providing them the knowledge, practical skills and counseling necessary for engaging the social enterprise world. In order to achieve this ambitious goal, the EMwoSE consortium will deeply take into consideration the barriers that disadvantaged woman face: current working conditions, skills gaps, psychological and cultural obstacles.
Therefore the main target groups of the project are: firstly, disadvantaged and unemployed women from ethnic minorities and secondly the trainers and business advisors that can support them.
The cooperation among the 7 partners of EMwoSE consortium will produce 4 Intellectual outputs in order to address the identified needs related to the empowerment of women in the SE field.
During the project quantitative and qualitative survey will be conducted in all 7 countries in order to detect the main challenges, skill gaps and needs related to the current situation of women from ethnic minorities in Social Enterprises. The Storytelling library will facilitate knowledge-sharing, exchanges of best practices, reinforce decision-making skills and create commitment to change. It will tackle the lack of role examples of women from ethnic minorities in Social Enterprises having an inspirational function for the target group members. Learning Resources for coaching/training women from ethnic minorities will be created. It will include modules gathering the adequate methodologies to address women from ethnic minorities in order to effectively transfer them Social Entrepreneurship skills, especially taking into account cultural barriers.
If you have any questions regarding the project, please contact us by e-mail projects@inovacijubiuras.lt
