Migrants, especially migrant women, experience higher unemployment and under-employed rates in EU countries than their native citizens (OECD 2013). Within this scenario, bolstering business creation among migrants, particularly among migrant women, is a key strategy to allow individual migrants to reach their full potential, while simultaneously improving labour market integration and fostering the creation of added value, innovation and productivity in their host countries. The Advancing Migrant Women project will achieve this objective by offering a targeted and comprehensive business creation support scheme in Finland, the UK, Italy and France, which takes into account the migrant and gender dimensions as well as an inter-cultural approach with a strong focus on entrepreneurial soft skills. The blended learning methodology for the non-formal business training will include a mix of theoretical lessons, group workshops, active learning, e-learning and personal coaching. The flexibility in the delivery of the programme will ensure that learner’s cultural needs and learning styles are being addressed. At least 12 migrant women (3 learners per country) will be selected to take part in a European Training Event to pilot the training materials developed, followed by a second local piloting phase. This will not only increase their skills and competences in the field of entrepreneurship and employability, but will also give them the opportunity to communicate and network with peers, meet other migrant women from the same communities and form friendships, and build a greater support network. A minimum number of 52 migrant women will benefit directly from the training In order to empower more migrant women to set up their own business, the training materials will finally be transformed into a “Handbook for Female Migrant Entrepreneurial Development”. This document will be uploaded on the Project Platform and will therefore be spread to migrant women beyond the training participants and the partner countries. As the platform will be available beyond the project lifetime (a minimum of 5 years), migrant women will be able to get support from the platform for a longer time and trainers will be able to get the training materials in order to repeat the training after the project lifetime. At the end of the project, it is envisaged that the women participating in the project will have increased their self-confidence and would have acquired the needed skills to set up a business., thereby actively integrating in their local community and contributing to the local, national and European economy.
Migrants experience higher unemployment and under-employed rates in EU countries than their native citizens (OECD 2013). An especially vulnerable group is migrant women who are subjects of a double-disadvantage as migrants and as women. As lack of employment is one key challenge for them, entrepreneurship has the potential to provide employment. Within this scenario, bolstering business creation among migrant women, is a key strategy to improve the labour market integration through self-employment of migrant women, and help them to reach their full potential while fostering the creation of added value, innovation, productivity and integration in their host countries. The Kaleidoscope project addressed this challenge by developing entrepreneurship training which focuses especially on soft skills needed in entrepreneurship and that is particularly tailored to the needs of migrant women. The Kaleidoscope training has been developed in a consortium of four partners coming from countries with a different history and situation of migration, Finland, France, Italy and the UK, and with complementary expertise in entrepreneurship, migration, vulnerable groups and women, creativity and formal education. The Kaleidoscope entrepreneurship training is delivered face-to-face and on the social learning platform as blended learning using a mix of methods from basic theory of the topic, workshops, action learning, e-learning to personal coaching. The non-formal nature of training and the flexibility in its delivery ensures that learners’ cultural needs and learning styles are being addressed and that the educational background does not limit the participation in training. The target groups of training are: 1) Migrant women residing in the EU 2) Stakeholders: Migrant trainers and workers, unemployment centres and workers, start-up incubators, social workers, municipalities, policy makers etc. who can organise the training. The Kaleidoscope training is formed of six modules: 1) Action Learning and Coaching 2) Daily Problem Solving, networking, communication 3) Creativity and fun for developing an entrepreneurial mindset + Business modelling as a game 4) Entrepreneurship education for migrant women, resilience and entrepreneurship 5) Intercultural barriers to access market, learning from the hosting culture and how to adapt it 6) Progress and Reflection The modules are complemented by additional resources. A competence validation at the beginning of training helps migrant women to detect the competence areas which need most attention and to tailor individual training paths. At the end of the training the competence validation helps to see the progress. In addition, a handbook for self-learning supports individual learning and provides complementary material to training. The development of the training and competence validation benefits from the research and the Kaleidoscope Competence Framework for entrepreneurial support of migrant women developed during the first phase of the project. All the training material are freely available on the Kaleidoscope Social Learning Platform which, besides providing the training materials online, enables discussions, learning and group work through a forum and through cloud tools. Migrant women have the possibility to upload their personal mini CVs on the platform too. The project reports and the handbook are also freely available in the results section of the project website https://www.kaleidoscopeproject.eu/about/results/ in the respective language section. During the project, the Kaleidoscope training was piloted in all partner countries with 54 migrant women of 29 nationalities and four continents: 13 in the UK, 18 in France, 9 in Italy, and 14 in Finland. In addition, 12 of them took part in an international pilot training week. The feedback from the participating women was similar despite their differences. Hence the training seems to be suitable to any national, cultural and educational background. The women felt that the training was highly useful, appropriate and relevant, empowering and increasing their self-belief, and that it helped them during their first steps towards entrepreneurship and in understanding their potential. All the participants showed an increase in mastering entrepreneurial soft skills. The training and the handbook were evaluated positively also by the stakeholders. Based on the highly positive feedback from the target groups and stakeholders, it can be concluded that the Kaleidoscope training addresses well to the needs of all migrant. The training material is the first of its kind, entrepreneurship training specially targeted for migrant women. As the material is also freely available online for all migrant women and for all trainers working with migrants to implement the training, in the future, more migrant women are expected to receive help in their business creation and employment through Entrepreneurship.