Entrepreneurial learning – entrepreneurship education
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 start-uppers. 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%.
Gender equality / equal opportunities
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.
