Although women constitute more than 50% of the European population, they have been traditionally underrepresented in the labour market and affected by unemployment more than men. According to Eurostat, at the beginning of 2018, the EU unemployment rate was 8,6% (around 18 mln. people) and half of them have been unemployed for more than one year. However, the share of women among those EU citizens without a job, is more than 50%.

Project Entrepreneurship for Woman (E4W) aims at increasing women’s employability skills. Today problem solving, teamwork, creativity, organization, communication, leadership and digital competences are some of the core skills required by European labour market. The project will develop an entrepreneurship educational pathway for disadvantaged women through a project-based learning approach integrated with ICT in non-formal adult education institutions. During the two years of project lifetime, the course will be tested with the educators of non-formal adult learning organizations and women who would like to improve their project management and ICT skills.

E4W is a Strategic Partnership coordinated Rural Internet Access Points from Lithuania and involving also the DAISSy research group of Computer Technology Institute and Press “Diophantus” from Greece, Simbioza Genesis from Slovenia and Stiftung Digitale Chancen from Germany. The project is funded in the Erasmus+/KA2 programme.

The project kick-off meeting took place in Berlin on December 17-18, 2018. Representatives of the four project partner organizations participated in the meeting that was hosted by SDC. Under the coordination of Laura Grineviciute from RIAP, the project manager, several details regarding execution and coordination of this multinational project were smoothed out and put together.

The first day of the kick-off meeting was dedicated to the presentation of partners’ experience and practice sharing on innovative teaching and learning methods in the fields of entrepreneurship, ICT and project management. The second day was oriented to detailing the activity descriptions of all project work packages, putting emphasis on the instructional strategy, the first project outcome that will  be available this May.