5th Newsletter of WINNER – February 2024
As we begin a new year, Project Winner is ending. Its goal was to help women entrepreneurs develop their talents. With Winner, we wanted to inspire women and stimulate their interest in pursuing entrepreneurial careers by challenging them during hackathon sessions in November and December 2023.
During the eight-week workshop, the women entrepreneurs developed their skills acquired during the course.
The dedicated mentors patiently and kindly shared their knowledge from the very first session through the comprehensive theoretical presentation, which unveiled the fundamentals of the Business Model Canvas (BMC). Participants delved into the nine key elements that make up the framework, providing a panoramic view of how companies strategically plan and organize their operations.
The workshops had two key objectives: first, to enable the beneficiaries to identify the key competencies essential for entrepreneurial success, and second, to provide them with relevant resources and strategies for developing these competencies. To understand essential entrepreneurial competencies, such as leadership, resilience, and problem-solving skills, we relied on the EntreComp platform, providing a comprehensive understanding of the multifaceted nature of entrepreneurial success.
Over the course of these sessions, participants built a good toolbox for developing their business by delving into the complexities of creating a comprehensive fundraising strategy. Practical exercises, including case study analysis, provided concrete opportunities for the identification of key skills crucial to fundraising success, such as effective storytelling and relationship cultivation.
At the end of this course, participants were provided with a platform to showcase their BMC proposals, but it also has the creation of a constructive learning environment through the interaction of mentors. The use of standardized evaluation criteria ensured a fair and objective evaluation, which ultimately led to the recognition of Francesca Catalano, an industrial product designer, as a deserving winner.
Francesca was able to positively impress the mentors with the commitment the originality of her project, namely “Officina Cartestracce, ecological creativity.”
“Offina Cartestracce is a place where anyone can find their own space to ‘get their hands dirty’ with ecological creativity. The space aims to enhance artisanal manufacturing from a technological perspective oriented toward the circular economy,” Francesca explains, adding that the workshop creates customized and customizable objects using only recycled cardboard with the intention of raising awareness, especially among children and young people, of the issues of conscious recycling, reuse. The success of this final event underscores the effectiveness of mentoring and structured evaluation in improving the quality of the project results.
In February, Winner’s partners will meet in Valencia, Spain where we will have the pleasure of exchanging our opinions and experiences and, especially, the winners of the hackathons will be able to show their wonderful ideas in front of the public.