Projects

Name of the project

Women’s Entrepreneurship CoAches traiNing

Acronym

WECAN

Implementation period

01.11.2019 – 31.10.2021

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 aims at strengthening women’s entrepreneurial capacity and 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.

1. WECAN methodological guide for coaching adult women in sense of initiative andentrepreneurship
2. WECAN Curriculum Programme with Innovative training materials
3. WECAN e-Learning Pack and e-learning platform that will offer the wider community access to followthe course and get all the knowledge developed plus a diploma

Target groups

1. 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)
2. 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.
3. Tutors, trainers and counsellors who have experience at various levels in providing non-formal learning in partners' context.