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KA2 Youth INN. “FEMME”

Fostering Entrepreneurial Mindset in Migrants through Education (FEMME)

KA205 – Strategic Partnerships for Youth 

“Fostering Entrepreneurial Mindset in Migrants through Education” (FEMME) will develop the entrepreneurial mindset and related hard/soft skills in first and second generation female youth migrants aged 18-25 potential entrepreneurs. 

Direct project target will be first and second generation youth female migrants aged 18-25 from partner countries suffering from socioeconomic marginalization, interested and motivated in becoming entrepreneurs, kick-starting and developing their entrepreneurial ideas. 

FEMME will develop the entrepreneurial mindset and related hard/soft skills in first and second generation female youth migrants aged 18-25 potential entrepreneurs

The project will also directly target youth workers from partners, interested in acquiring instruments of entrepreneurial support to youth female migrants. Indirect project target is the wider audience of disadvantaged migrant female youths in partner countries and Europe as well as the youth operators and organizations who work with the foregoing target either specifically or as a subset of the wider youth population. The project meets the challenge of enhancing the entrepreneurial spirit and education of young people in the EU, in order to increase business creation rates and provide alternative pathways of employability and personal fulfilment to the youth, with a particular focus on female youngsters. 

According to the latest statistical evidence of the EC (see https://ec.europa.eu/growth/smes/promoting-entrepreneurship/we-work for/women_en), the challenge of female entrepreneurial participation is substantial, with women representing 52% of the total European population, but only 34.4% of the EU self-employed and 30% of startuppers. 

European societies are also at the center of migration and refugee flows dynamics as well as of the related challenge of integrating vast masses of refugees, many of whom are women. UNHCR data quantify in 350,000 individuals the number of third nationals who crossed the Mediterranean Sea in 2016 alone. The aforementioned trend is already at play, and will be ever more in the future, in orienting the evolution of European societies in a multicultural perspective. Nowadays, the overall population of Europe is composed of non-nationals for up to the 5%. 

Far from representing a hindrance to the development of the hosting societies, migrants have recurrently proven to provide an added value to socioeconomic growth by providing an additional pool of entrepreneurial motivation and potential. As highlighted by the EU “Entrepreneurship 2020 Action Plan”, if Europe is to make the most of the opportunities provided by an ever developing and challenging global environment, entrepreneurship is to be made the growth engine of the European economy, which “needs a thorough, far-reaching cultural change”. The Action Plan also points out that migrants represent a valuable component in the foregoing evolution, due to their higher rates of business creation as compared with nationals, yet “Notwithstanding that migrants have higher business creation rates than the rest of the population they fail more due to a lack of information, knowledge and language skills”. Female migrants are motivated to become entrepreneurs but face a set of barriers related to access to training, business support services, language barriers, inadequate management and marketing skills. 

They also represent particularly vulnerable targets in that they compound these barriers with gender disadvantage. The project aims at addressing the challenges identified above by means of providing young female migrants in possession of entrepreneurial motivation with the attitudes and skills needed to start-up and grow their own start-ups.  

FEMME will deliver on this aim through the following: 

– Research for the identification of the training needs of female youth migrant entrepreneurs and their connection with the existing educational offer, carried out by a combination of desk research and surveying. 

– Guide for female migrant entrepreneurs integrating methodologies of self-learning supporting them in giving shape to and developing their entrepreneurial ideas. The Guide will be tested and reviewed in a specific educational mobility with female migrant prospective entrepreneurs. A following local session of Piloting will allow participants to further test the Guide as a tool of concrete orientation in the establishment and development of their own businesses. 

– Training Toolkit for Trainers. The Toolkit will integrate guidelines and methods of NFE tailored to the needs of youth workers willing to implement educational programmes to empower prospective female migrant entrepreneurs. 

– Online modules and Web Platform. Partners will produce a specific Web Platform with integrated elearning modules in multiple languages targeted at an audience of female youth migrants prospective entrepreneurs in Europe. The modules will provide the target with useful information and exercises supporting them in the design and development of their own entrepreneurial ideas. 

Testing of Toolkit and Manual will be delivered in a mobility of youth workers.