Successfully conducted entrepreneurship for women in a digital world trainings

As one of the project partners in the Entrepreneurship For Women programme, Simbioza organized a series of training for disadvantaged women with the aim of upskilling.

Recently, as our society progresses towards increased digitalization, especially disadvantaged women have suffered on the job market. Women overall are still far from achieving economic independence, are less likely to be employed, are employed in lower-paid positions, and tend to take more breaks from their careers. In order to overcome these issues and expand the opportunities for women on the job market, Simbioza and its project partners have designed a curriculum that upskills women especially in the field of entrepreneurship and digitalization. Skills from these two fields are one of the most sought after by employers nowadays.

The training is conceptualized as a project-based learning course and combines three different fields – project management, digital skills and entrepreneurial skills. The program duration is 25 hours and consists of three interconnected modules. Each of the modules focuses in some way on each respective field and includes learning objectives which range from the basics of project management, planning a project, finding stakeholders and evaluating ideas, to more technical skills such as the use of different methods and techniques of planning and executing projects. Each of the sessions in every module also includes an ICT component, which encourages constant learning and acquirement of ICT skills throughout the course of the training.

Just in Slovenia, 30 women attended the course this summer. All educators are experienced professionals who work in adult education, and their training will create a multiplier effect, where they will be able to transfer their newfound knowledge and specific skills to their work environment. Within each of the module’s components’, the educators focused mostly on the skills and knowledge that the women can then utilize in their work environment and further upgrade.

Both educators and participants received a certificate that shows their progress. The participants, in order to mark their progress more in detail, received open badges, awarded through evaluation in Moodle. This way, they are free to share their newfound skills on the web, their social media sites, LinkedIn, etc., further aiding their future success.