Today, the global economic, social and technological developments need women to take more active roles in labour market. Although women constitute half of the population in the world, they are not enough represented in the labour market and this is a serious loss in terms of human resources. According to Entrepeneurship Analytical report 2010 of Europen Comission, only % 12 of EU citizens have entrepeneurship activities and only % 39 of this rate constitutes women. Considering these data, EMWOSE project replies to the following needs: 1)women from ethnic minorities need to be aware of the successful women entrepreneurs as role examples to increase their self-confidence; 2) trainers and business advisors need innovative and adapted methodologies to transfer entrepreneurship skills to women from ethnic minorities taking into consideration the cultural barriers; 3) women from ethnic minorities and trainers/business advisors need to have easy access to open educational resources online in order to empower themselves according to their needs and their interests. Considering these needs, the project aims at increasing the employment of women from ethnic minorities providing them the knowledge, practical skills and counseling necessary for engaging the social enterprise world. In order to achieve this ambitious goal, the EMwoSE consortium will deeply take into consideration the barriers that disadvantaged woman face:current working conditions, skills gaps, psychological and cultural obstacles. Therefore the main target groups of the project are: firstly, disadvantaged and unemployed women from ethnic minorities and secondly the trainers and business advisors that can support them. The cooperation among the 7 partners of EMWOSE consortium will produce 4 Intellectual outputs in order to address the identified needs related to the empowerment of women in the SE field. IO1: State of the art in the 7 countries, quantitative and qualitative survey, skills gaps analysis, will detect the main challenges and needs related to the current situation of women from ethnic minorities in Social Enterprises. A Survey Report will be the final outcome and it will be used as basis/pillar to develop the other IOs. IO2: Storytelling library of Success Stories. This Storytelling library will facilitate knowledge sharing, exchanges of best practices, reinforce decision-making skills and creates commitment to change. It will tackle the lack of role examples of women from ethnic minorities in SE (Need 1) having an inspirational function and reinforcing the self-esteem of the target group members. IO3: Learning Resources for coaching/training women from ethnic minorities. This outcome will include modules gathering the adequate methodologies to address women from ethnic minorities in order to effectively transfer them SE skills, especially taking into account cultural barriers (Need 2). IO4: Web Learning Platform including self-assessment paths to access directly at the more adequate section of IO1, IO2, IO3. The outcome will made available all the material produced enlarging the potential users and maximizing the impact of the project. Moreover its interactive nature will reinforce the user-friendly potential of the intellectual outcomes. Finally, the e-platform will constitute a medium to create and enlarge the network of relevant stakeholders among partner countries and beyond that. Furthermore the e-Platform will answer to the lack of Open Educational Resources accessible for the different target groups (Need 3).
The EMwoSE project has successfully developed a suite of on-line resources to support women from ethnic minorities in social enterprises. They were developed following extensive engagement with women from ethnic minorities from the 7 partner countries and based on a literature review of the present state of the target group in enterprise and the barriers they encountered, a State of the Art report based on the surveying of the women and also the agencies that support the women in enterprise, a digital Storytelling Library with 32 4-6 minute videos and 35 transcripts of the women from the partner countries telling their stories and the on-line resources including 7 modules on topics that arose from the State of the Art analysis. It produced 4 intellectual outputs to address the identified needs related to the empowerment of women the in social enterprise field. These included -a state of the art report related to the current situation of women from ethnic minorities in social enterprise; -a digital storytelling library of 32 videos and 35 transcripts of success stories, sharing knowledge and best practice; -learning resources for coaching/training women from ethnic minorities including 7 modules providing knowledge and addressing the needs of the women as identified in the State of the Art Report analysis and -a web learning platform that has enlarged the network of relevant stakeholders. All of the materials are available in the partner languages (English, German, Lithuanian, Greek, Turkish and Italian) and are fully available free of charges on the project webpage www.emwose.eu. The rationale for EMwoSE emerged from the need to provide new scientific evidence on the factors that challenged women from ethnic minorities enabling them to set up their own social enterprises. The analysis also contributed to a better understanding of the needs and barriers faced by female social entrepreneurs, both from their own perspective and that of the experts involved. In recent years, there has been a growing interest in social enterprises by different organizations, groups, and individuals including women from ethnic minorities. Furthermore, according to the results of the present study, women from ethnic minorities contribute to the economic and social development of the region by serving those in need, supporting the local market, helping the integration of vulnerable groups, promoting different cultures and foods through social entrepreneurship activities. Thus, empowering women from ethnic minorities, through social entrepreneurship, is important both for themselves and for their environment. In this context, it is important to develop strategies and policies to encourage social entrepreneurship activities. The aim of this project was to increase the employment of women from ethnic minorities by providing them adequate guidance and accessible tools to be an active player in the SE world. The EMwoSE consortium of 7 project partners worked very effectively together bringing a range of expertise from education, entrepreneurial subjects, intercultural dialogue and gender equality issues, involvement in SE and training activities, dissemination, academic/research skills and project management skills together to deliver the project with high quality materials. Extensive consultation was facilitated by the partners and developed close working relationships with women from the target groups in their communities and thus enabled the partners to gather data at a local and national level. This was also critical to facilitating the in depth case studies (35 in total) which were developed for the digital Storytelling Library during the project. 7 training modules were developed based on the learnings from the State of the Art Report and case studies and are available via http://www.emwose.eu. The seven modules cover Module 1: Introduction of Social Enterprise Module 2: Starting your own Business Module 3: Marketing and Communication Module 4: Running your Business Module 5: Funding Module 6: Networking Module 7: Sustainability