INSPIREYOWUP six-country survey on women’s entrepreneurship

The European Centre for Women and Technology is from 1.10.2013 to 30.09.2015 responsible for leading the Leonardo da Vinci Transfer of Innovation Project supported by the European Commission EACEA and the Norwegian Centre for International Cooperation in Education (SIU) – http://www.inspireyowup.eu

ECWT’s partners in the project are:

• DISY – the Democratic Rally of Cyprus
• BDF – Business Development Friesland, The Netherlands
• MILITOS S.A. – Athens, Greece
• CorkBIC, Cork, Ireland
• CEEI Burgos, Spain

The project will adapt and develop an innovative training package on entrepreneurship skills targeting unemployed and inactive young people and women in specific to be tested and evaluated by the target groups (TGs). The aim is to inspire and empower these groups to set up, run and grow their own businesses.

To identify the real needs of the target group the six partners have started the project by carrying out a survey in their national languages in all six countries and they managed to get almost 900 replies in March-April 2014. A state of the art report about entrepreneurship education in the EU /globally / and in the six countries in specific and survey outcomes in the participating countries were summarized in May 2014.

Eva Fabry, Director of ECWT and project manager of INSPIREYOWUp summarized key findings for the ECWT Newsletter:

• The consortium experiences great interest for the project and the survey in all countries, primarily in Greece, Ireland, and the Netherlands.
• The fact that 77% of the respondents want to start up their own businesses is a very positive experience!
• Partners are delighted to see that 90,35% of the respondents have stressed their need for new training!
• Of utmost importance is the concrete needs identified: all age categories want to have more knowledge about: financial management and investment readiness, business planning, financial management, opportunity recognition, building competencies, and mentoring.