Description
The project’s main goal is to promote gender equality, by strengthening women’s inclusion in the labour market, and in particular, of those unemployed and/or with an immigrant background. It will develop and pilot an integrated capacity building model geared towards NGOs that support female entrepreneurship, focusing on the specific obstacles faced by women and their underused entrepreneurial potential. Planned activities to that end include, namely, a diagnosis of the problem and incorporation of international best practices, awareness-raising and capacity-building of stakeholders, and evaluation and dissemination of the attained results. This project also aims at raising awareness on the need to set a national policy regarding female entrepreneurship; as well as stimulating the creation of partnerships amongst Portuguese NGOs, between Portuguese NGOs and public entities relevant to the problem at hand, and between Portuguese NGOs and Donor Country organizations. It should also be noted that this project is associated to a bilateral cooperation initiative with the Nordland Research Institute, from Norway.
Summary of project results
Women, including immigrants, face serious obstacles (contextual, economic and skills), in the labour market, particularly during an economic crisis. Those obstacles make it difficult to participate in public policies (or make such participation effective) and to promote entrepreneurship, gender equality and the fight against discrimination. NGOs are important vehicles to improve this situation because they play a crucial role in proximity support to the disadvantaged public. An online platform was set up whose tools and videos (namely 9 live stories of female entrepreneurs) were accessed by 1139 women (estimated figure on the basis of 1600 users) who are expected to be now more informed and prepared to create their own job. 24 NGOs have their capacities increased to deal with female entrepreneurship and gender equality issues. The project failed however to set up a methodology to assess the number of women who have really improved their skills regarding entrepreneurship (100 was the initial target). To reach these results training and capacity-building actions were undertaken, an implementation manual for professionals was prepared and is available on the platform, 9 videos of entrepreneur women were produced and reports on diagnosis and international benchmarks on female entrepreneurship were elaborated. The project gained from cooperation with a Norwegian entity (Nordland Research Institute) access to a new diagnosis methodology on entrepreneurship and experience to deal with specific problems of vulnerable groups like immigrants. Project promoter and partners report that the project offered the opportunity for them to improve their knowledge and skills on female entrepreneurship.
Summary of bilateral results
The Norwegian partner was key to the project, providing guidance and scientific expertise. Through their participation in a conference on female entrepreneurship, bilateral relations between the partners were strengthened. The Norwegian partner supervised process of innovation transfer and established the project benchmarks.