The Project

WINNER unlocks the pathway to key competencies acquisition and entrepreneurship stimulus triggering for adult women.

Overview

Taking into consideration the current perceptions and attitudes on female entrepreneurship, the WINNER project delivers accessible entrepreneurship training and counselling support, led by social and market needs. It creates effective linkages with the mainstream community to foster women-specific guidance, combating gender bias and relevant behaviours.

The project’s initial priority is to increase entrepreneurship learning opportunities for adult women, offering a toolkit of digital skills through an educational mentor-trainee interaction that fosters blended and autonomous learning.

Objectives

Develop digital and entrepreneurial skills based on people-oriented innovative practices and guidance.
Inspire and trigger women's interest in pursuing an entrepreneurial career.
Launch an e-learning platform for inclusive and participatory entrepreneurial training.
Establish a strong network of successful female entrepreneurs and women interested in social entrepreneurship.
Create a flexible mentoring program that will educate both mentors and female trainees.
Provide opportunities for higher employability through digital skills training and networking.
Deliver an OER-based open educational curriculum.
Cultivate feelings of self-confidence, active participation, entrepreneurial mentality, creativity, and civic engagement.
Offer a safe online environment built on inclusion, diversity, equality, and stability.

The partners’ main goal is to create a direct connection between the needs of the women interested in entrepreneurship and the WINNER objectives, producing high-quality impact in the short and in the long term.

Results

Online Platform & Open Call Launching

The platform promotes autonomous learning, facilitating inexperienced users to navigate its training content and features. The architecture of the platform stimulates intellectual curiosity and supports creative engagement by placing the learner at the center of the procedure. All virtual features of the WINNER platform are created to be functional and flexible to avoid rigidity and virtual stiffness. The platform includes community-building features such as blogs, virtual meeting rooms and social networking applications, and it is the cornerstone for Open Call Launching.

Online Social Entrepreneurship Curriculum

The online training curriculum effectively focuses on 3 main skill families:

All modules are designed to carry a dual impact, to train adult women interested in entrepreneurship and the mentors that will transmit this knowledge. The cross-stakeholder training is conducted in an interactive and participatory way to ensure the engagement of adult women, the effectiveness of the educational material, and networking and team building between participants.

Training Guidelines for Mentors

The guidelines support the trainees’ working groups in their concept and prototype development process. The detailed guidelines for mentors are developed comprehensibly to facilitate the application of the curriculum by external trainers and relevant bodies in the field. They ensure that all mentors are properly trained in the guiding principles of effective mentoring, enabling them to motivate trainees to make substantial progress in the field of entrepreneurship.

Social Entrepreneurship Women Hackathon

The social entrepreneurship women’s hackathon gave participants the opportunity to apply the skills, tools and concepts they have acquired through their training by working collectively to define an entrepreneurship idea and develop a novel prototype for their final presentations. The hackathon focused on strengthening the links created within the WINNER community through an exciting and well-organized process, led by the mentors.

Teams worked in a self-directed way, and the 3 best ideas were supported by the mentors and partner organizations to further develop and eventually enter the market.