Description
The project will address Spain's rural areas, where women suffer from wage discrimination and lack of opportunities to access the labor market.The project focuses on training and information and targets unemployed women over 45 without formal education who wish to enter the labor market. The training will be provided in two ways: online and classroom training. The content of the training will include the catering industry and food handling, e-commerce and new technologies, cooperatives and social economy, occupational risk prevention and sustainability, and finally, internationalization and support mechanisms for micro enterprises and the social sector economy. The expected outcome is the establishment of a minimum of two cooperatives formed by female participants.
Summary of project results
There are several barriers for the access to employment for over 45 years old women of rural areas, such as low educational attainment levels and the impact of care provision tasks to relatives. In addition, the existing employment usually involves low wages (400-1.000€). The main objective of the project was to train in social entrepreneurship to women over 45 years in situation or at-risk-of social exclusion. Through this objective the project also aimed to promote labour insertion of these women and their achievement of higher and better jobs closer to decision making tasks. The project also aimed to improve the ITC skills and extend digital literacy. The project has been organised through several phases of work. In the first phase the final design of the project was developed and a network of city councils was created, signing collaboration agreements with them and carrying out the dissemination of the project. At the end of this phase the selection of women participants was done. After these starting points several training courses have been provided to participants. These courses have been aimed to provide to participants the skills needed for the development of an entrepreneurial project. The main contents of courses have been provided online, participants received a tablet with mobile 4G Internet connection. This online training has been complemented by classroom meetings, once per week, plus one yearly meeting. A total of 4 courses have been organised: “Electronic commerce and new technologies”; “Internationalization and support mechanisms for microenterprises and social economy”; “Cooperatives, social economy, labour risks prevention and sustainability”; and “Hospitality sector and food handling for human consumption”. In addition to these courses an event “Encuentro Rede Esumo” was organised gathering participants with the aim of encouraging and assessing on the creation of cooperatives.
Summary of bilateral results