Excel: advanced financial skills as a catalyst for women entrepreneurs’ transformative power
Women represent 52% of the total European population, yet they account for just 34.4% of the EU's self-employed individuals, 30% of whom are start-up entrepreneurs (WeGate, 2021). Women represent the largest untapped entrepreneurial potential in Europe.
Even though they have overcome many problems, women who start businesses face special challenges. Difficulty securing finance is a primary concern for those seeking to start a business. So is limited business contacts and financial literacy. (WeBarometer, 2021). They consider financial management and cost control, business planning and organisation, and fundraising/investor relations to be areas in which they need training (WeBarometer, 2021). Therefore, mastering financial management and investment opportunities — including those provided by sustainable finance — is crucial for businesses to grow successfully while embracing sustainability. Women entrepreneurs must recognise financial literacy as a vital skill for them to develop.
The equality between men and women is a core EU value. Gender equality is also a matter of human rights, according to the UN’s Agenda 2030. The EC, through its Gender Equality Strategy, among other key actions, aims to close the gender gap in the labour market by 2025. This means offering women better opportunities to access training and learn new skills to better adapt to labour market changes (SME United, 2022), particularly related to the green transition (EISMEA, 2021), which can be seen as an opportunity for self-employment or career transition. Women-led enterprises have been shown to achieve higher ESG scores, being more likely to be innovative and support the green transition (EIB, 2022; Bloomberg, 2020; UN Women, 2022; FP Analytics, 2020).
CVET plays a key role in increasing women’s interest in entrepreneurship as a possible career path, embedding advanced financial literacy skills and ESG considerations as part of their entrepreneurial training, aligned with the European Skills Agenda and EISMEA’s key actions to foster women’s entrepreneurship. The offer could be gender-sensitive and sustainability-oriented and take many different forms, effectively helping women get financing, find the resources they need, join business networks, and consider more sustainable long-term investments, so they can reach their business goals (EISMEA, 2021). Thus, in the realm of entrepreneurship and sustainability, financial literacy for women is more than a skill – it is a transformative power.
The EXCEL consortium is putting forward EXCEL project with the motivation that its professionalizing training answers to EU concerns to increase advanced financial literacy and raise awareness to sustainable finance of women entrepreneurs when taking financial and strategic company decisions, fostering innovative and ESG-based business practices, and its guidance set ensures the continued professional training of CVET providers on future-oriented entrepreneurial competences.
ESG stands for Environmental, Social and Governance, and it is a set of standards that measure a business's impact on society and the environment, as well as how transparent and accountable it is.
ESG is a management approach that focuses on the long term. It's not just about spending money; it's about earning money more wisely, responsibly, and with an eye on the future. This means that ESG cannot be an add-on to strategy. A company's value is built through a set of specific actions that must be integral to it. These actions must be financial, social and environmental.
Regrettably, we are witnessing a growing tendency to marginalise ESG considerations. On occasion, this may be as a consequence of the relaxation of regulatory controls or the evolution of geopolitical dynamics and divergent market strategies. But this is a shortcut, and it is a very risky one. ESG provides companies with tools that can make them more resilient, flexible and trusted by their stakeholders. Companies that abandon ESG may find that they are missing out on these benefits.
ESG is not an aesthetic document, but a compendium of strategic resolutions, demonstrating that responsibility and profitability are not mutually exclusive. One increasingly stems from the other.
Our project: EXCEL: ADVANCED FINANCIAL SKILLS AS A CATALYST FOR WOMEN ENTREPRENEURS’ TRANSFORMATIVE POWER nr: 2024-1-PL01-KA220-VET-000244604, aims to increase advanced financial literacy, raise awareness to sustainable finance when taking financial and strategic company decisions and improve the networking opportunities of women entrepreneurs, fostering their business practices, as well as promote a gender-inclusive, sustainability-oriented, and entrepreneurial mindset and attitude in VET to inspire women they work with to become more entrepreneurial and ESG-oriented.
Partners will develop and pilot a training, video podcasts, digital escape rooms, infographics, and quizzes for women entrepreneurs; host a creative workshop and produce a set of useful resources to support the training methods of CVET professionals; design and develop an online learning platform to integrate all learning materials as OER; organise local events to promote networking opportunities for women entrepreneurs; and ensure the widespread promotion of the EXCEL results.
The EXCEL project will deliver a flexible and interactive modular training programme containing cutting-edge digital resources and organise local networking days to increase advanced financial skills, ESG considerations and networking opportunities for women entrepreneurs. The project also foresees a guidance set for CVET providers offering gender-sensitive and ESG-oriented useful resources to provide high-quality training targeting women entrepreneurs.
The project is realised by a consortium of 5 partner organisations: VIVA FEMINA, Poland – project leader and Mindshift Talent Advisory lda, Portugal, Meta4 Innovations e. U, Austria, INICIATIVAS DE FUTURO PARA UNA EUROPA SOCIAL COOP V, Spain, EMPORIKO KAI VIOMICHANIKO EPIMELITIRIO HERAKLIOU, Greece. Duration of the project: 01-11-2024 - 31/10/2026
More information:
Website: https://excel-erasmus.eu/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/105744665/admin/dashboard/
