While entrepreneurship represents a viable alternative of decent and sustainable employment for women migrants of diverse cultural backgrounds – a powerful way towards empowerment, self-realization, income creation and improvement of their social status – the potential contribution that entrepreneurship can bring to their lives and the economy of the host country is often hindered by a series of challenges ranging from traditional barriers to business creation – difficulties in accessing credit, overwhelming bureaucracy, and lack of familiarity with the (business) environment – to some more complex ones embedded in our social structures: cultural differences and stereotypes, gender biases and social norms social that pose unique barriers to business growth and profitability for female-run enterprises.
To support these entrepreneurs – and aspiring entrepreneurs – to navigate the challenges of starting or growing a business, Digital Leadership Institute organized between 17 and 19th of June 2022 the Athena Entrepreneurship Bootcamp, a free 3-day entrepreneurship program dedicated to third-national migrant of diverse backgrounds. The Bootcamp was structured in three interconnected modules that were also suitable to be followed independently according to each participant’s interest and need. The aim was to offer a comprehensive understanding of the business ecosystem in Belgium and to develop a community with a wide range of experience and expertise to support the participating entrepreneurs long-term.
The boothcamp was structured around three main topics:
Day 1- Administrative & Financial Skills: learning about the cultural diversity and business environment in Belgium, administrative and legal requirements when starting an entrepreneurial activity, and – very importantly – funding opportunities for female entrepreneurs launching or growing their businesses;
Day 2- Business Skills: a hands-on business training session where participants discussed about vision and mission, identifying limiting beliefs, and worked on designing theirs businesses using the Lean methodology.
Day 3- Digital Skills: participants learned what are the digital tools they can use to launch and manage their online businesses; how open a webshop and how to use digital marketing to optimize their online presence.
The materials* used during the Entrepreneurship Bootcamp can be found below:
Administrative and Financial Skills materials:
*The copyright of the materials belong to heir respective authors. No part of these materials may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form without the prior consent of the copyright holders, except in the case of brief quotations embodied permitted by copyright law.
Other Resources:
Free advice & support for entrepreneurs based in the Brussels Region: 1819 https://1819.brussels/en
The Entrepreneurship Bootcamp for Women of Diverse Cultural Backgrounds was organized as part of the Athena project – Approaches To valorise the High ENtrepreneuriAl potential of migrant women to contribute to their social and economic integration – a two-year project funded by the AMIF Program. The overall objective of the project is to contribute to the economic and social integration of migrant women in the EU society by improving the services of entrepreneurship support oriented to migrant women and creating a specific entrepreneurial path for them.The project is implemented by a consortium of six partners and covers five European countries , and will directly benefit a 210 migrant women, it will increase the capacities of more than 35 professionals working in entrepreneurship support roles, it will create synergies with several organisations and it will finally intend to influence policies through a series of policy recommendations. Here you can find more about the project: https://athenaproject.net/
The DLI Board are actively involved in outreach activities with partners and stakeholders around the world that promote ESTEAM* leadership by girls and women. Find out more below about our outreach activities in Spring 2022, including a 17 March #BreaktheBias event celebrating International Women’s Day. For upcoming events by DLI and our partners please visit here, and have a look at our calendar.
*Entrepreneurship and Art powered by Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics
5 January 2022 – Coding Over Cocktails Podcast (Online): On 5 January 2022, Cheryl Miller Van Dÿck, DLI Founding Director, joined the Coding Over Cocktails Podcast to discuss opportunities presented by the pandemic for organisations to drive inclusive digital transformation.
12 January 2022 – Women Empowerment in Women20 (Online) – In the capacity of Co-head of EU Delegation and Co-chair of the G20 Women20 Italy Digital Equity Working Group, Cheryl Miller Van Dÿck, DLI Founding Director, joined the 12 January webinar on the topic of Women Empowerment in Women20: Women20 Recommendations and their adoption in the G20 Leaders’ Declaration. The event was hosted by the outgoing W20 Italy Presidency with participation of the 2022 G20 Indonesia Women20 Presidency.
February 2022 – Staying Global While Staying Home (Online):Cheryl Miller Van Dÿck, DLI Founding Director, joined the February edition of NewComm Global Group‘s Staying Global While Staying Homewebcast to discuss opportunities presented by the recovery for driving inclusive digital transformation.
15 February 2022 – W20 Indonesia Policy Dialogue: Freedom from Discrimination: (Likupang, Indonesia & Online): On 15 February 2022, Cheryl Miller Van Dÿck, DLI Founding Director, joined the first policy dialogue side-event of the Indonesia G20 Women20 Presidency on the topic of Freedom from Discrimination: Historical Journey from Japan to Indonesia, taking place online and in Likupang, Indonesia.
8 March 2022 – IWD2022 Women in Diplomacy Luncheon (Brussels): On 8 March 2022, Cheryl Miller Van Dÿck, DLI Founding Director, joined a luncheon, hosted by the UK, US and Canadian Embassies to Belgium, to celebrate International Women’s Day 2022 and promote increased participation of women in diplomacy.
17 March 2022 – AWS #BreakTheBias Event (Brussels & Online): On 17 March 2022, Cheryl Miller Van Dÿck, DLI Founding Director, contributed to the 17 March #BreakTheBias event hosted by Amazon Web Services EMEA, and spoke on the topic of “Overview of Gender Equality in the AI Ecosystem: Where Are We and Where do We Want To Go?“
To browse past activities with DLI and our partners, please click here. Be sure to also visit our calendar, sign up for the DLI Newsletter and follow us on Facebook, Twitter & Instagram in order to keep up with DLI events and activities!
Gabriela Ramos, Assistant Director General for Social and Human Services, UNESCO (video message) Virginia Littlejohn, Co-head of US Delegation to the G20/Women20 & Global Coordinator, W20 Women Entrepreneurs Act Initiative (WE Act)
Tamara Dancheva, Senior Manager, International Relations at GSMA & EU Delegate to the G20/Women20
Format: This event will feature a Roundtable, with interventions by representatives of public and private organizations promotingwomen’s economic empowermentandclosing the gender digital dividefor economic recovery andsustainable development. A Question & Answer session open to the public will follow the Roundtable.
Registration: This online event is open to the public and registration is required. The event will be organized on Zoom and accessed via the STI Forum Whova platform which is still in process. Those who register via Zoom will also have access. Please stay tuned.
Live Stream: The event will also be streamed live on the DLI YouTube channel.
Concept Note:
Anywhere in the world today, a woman is:
Less likely to be online;
More likely to have low or no digital skills;
Less likely to be an IT professional; and
Far less likely to launch a tech-driven enterprise.
As a result, women are at greater risk of being excluded by the digital disruption, a phenomenon exacerbated by the COVID pandemic.
COVID has disproportionately impacted women—forcing millions out of the workplace, many permanently. In response, entrepreneurship is and will continue to be a key factor in sustaining financial independence for women and in reigniting the global economy. In the digital society, such participation is increasingly linked to skills supporting both digitally-enabled and digitally-driven entrepreneurship.
However, a key characteristic of the digital disruption which cuts across geographic locations and socio-economic conditions is that, no matter where they are in the world, women are less likely to be online than men. Of the Earth’s 7.8 billion human population, men make up thirty percent and women twenty-five percent of people who are online, reflecting 195 million fewer women online overall. Despite a surge in online participation during the COVID pandemic, the rate at which women go online continues to lag behind. This ubiquitous and persistent trend represents the digital divide compounded by the gender gap which, without focused effort to address it, risks widening.
In countries where digitalization has a firmer hold, women are still less likely to have digital skills, take up formal computer science or other STEM studies, or hold technical and leadership roles in IT organizations.Globally, the founder of a digitally-driven enterprise is five times more likely to be a man than a woman, and in many places the ratio is closer to ten-to-one.
In addition to the yawing social divide this reality reflects, italso represents a loss for the global economy and for women themselves who are unable to fully realize their potential as economics actors in an increasingly digital society. In 2013, the UN reported that bringing 600 million women and girls online could boost global GDP by up to $18B.A European study of the same period suggests that equal participation of women in the ICT sector would contribute as much as €9B annually to the European economy.Especially as a response to the COVID-induced “She-cession,” action to tackle the gender digital divide presents an opportunity to improve women’s economic agency, address the digital skills and job gap, and promote a pathway toward sustainable development.
Regardless of geography, closing the gender digital divide presents a critical factor in ensuring women’s economic agency, previously and again at present, in order to promote economic development. This focus has the advantages of limiting the risk of further marginalization of women as a result of the digital disruption, addressing the global IT skills gap, filling tech jobs that otherwise go unfilled, and of supporting a woman’s pathway to economic agency in the workforce and as an entrepreneur whose work is digitally-enabled and/or tech-driven.
As such, the greatest single driver of economic recovery exiting the COVID pandemic, and that which will most contribute to sustainable development going forward, will be action supporting digital equity for women’s economic agency at the intersection of promoting women’s economic empowerment (WEE)—with women as entrepreneurs, equal actors in the workforce, and leaders across the board—and closing the gender digital divide (GDD).
Questions: The event will investigate the following questions:
What is the economic impact of the gender digital divide and the opportunity presented by closing it?
What is the state-of-play regarding development action that focuses on tackling the gender digital divide and promoting women’s economic empowerment?
What indicators and best practices may be employed to support digital equity for women’s economic agency as a pathway to economic recovery and sustainable development?
Topics: The event will address the topics of women’s economic empowerment, the gender digital divide, gender equality, woman’s rights, inclusive digital transformation, digital financial inclusion, access to finance, online safety, digital equity, digital skills, STEM skills, women-led entrepreneurship, economic recovery, building forward better from COVID, diversity, equity, inclusion, women in peacekeeping and conflict avoidance, women migrants and refugees, women in leadership, women in innovation, female founders, the SDGs, sustainable development goals, and sustainable development.
Women-led entrepreneurship can act as an enabler of women’s economic empowerment and gender equality and contribute to the post-COVID economic recovery.
On this important topic, DLI and it’s partners organized an event entitled Moving Forward Support for Women Entrepreneurs on 16 March 2022 at the Residence Palace in Brussels. The event was hybrid, which supported people to attend from a large variety of countries and organisations.
Moving Forward Support for Women Entrepreneurs was organised in the framework of the Move It Forward Plus project (MIF+), an Erasmus Plus-funded project to support organizations working in the field of female digital entrepreneurship by equipping them with tools and strategies to better support aspiring women entrepreneurs. The highlighted “tool” was the Move It Forward female digital starters weekend, a two-day program with the aim of bringing together teen and adult women to provide them with the digital skills, resources and access to expertise necessary to inspire them to take up digital entrepreneurship.
During the event, speakers highlighted the importance of supporting women-led entrepreneurship from different angles and perspectives.
First, Cheryl Miller, DLI Director and Co-head of EU Delegation to the G20 / Women20, dug into why it is important to support women entrepreneurs and what is at stake if this is not done.
The project coordinator, Marina Andrieu from WIDE(Luxembourg) then presented tools and methodologies developed in the MIF + project, and how they can be applied and used for training and mentoring of future digital entrepreneurs.
Next, MIF+ partner organisations, Fundatia Professional (Romania), Led by Her (France), WIDE (Luxembourg), and CTK Rijeka (Croatia), described the specific actions they implemented to support women entrepreneurs and the impact this had in their local communities.
In the final and most heart-warming part of the event, three future women entrepreneurs who are currently enrolled in the MIF+ mentoring program, shared their experiences of why and how they started on their entrepreneurship journey. In each case, they underscored the fact that getting support to develop their project idea—first during the MIF digital starters weekend and afterwards with guidance from a mentor—is what has permitted them to start making their entrepreneurship dreams come true.
The Women Power Code project aims to celebrate the art of creating with code, to motivate young and adult women to start developing tech skills, and to connect individuals with organisations keen to support women in the digital society. In order to showcase achievements in the project, WPC partners from across Europe are organising Women Power Code Skills Week, a series of events addressing disruptive technologies and career opportunities arising in the tech sector. Join us for interesting discussions and practical workshops by registering at the links below, and join the Women Power Code Social Learning Community to meet like-minded peers.
14 July 18:00 CEST: Introduction to the Internet of Things: ”Build your first mobile app” – online workshop organised by Digital Leadership Institute in collaboration with CIVIC. Exploring the Internet of Things, this online workshop will focus on practical skills as we will be creating our first mobile app with MIT App Inventor.
16 July 18:00 CEST: Introduction to 3D Printing: ”Design your first 3D object” – online workshop organised by Digital Leadership Institute. Examining development of the 3D printing market in recent years, during this workshop we will learn the first steps to create a 3D object and discuss the opportunities for developing new skills and competences in this field.
21 July 18:00 CEST: Women Power Code Final Conference: ”New skills for the digital age” – online conference organised by the Digital Leadership Institute. During this event, we will discuss the results of the Women Power Code project, focusing on the most relevant skills for the digital age and opportunities in technological fields for women who want to enter or shift to digital careers.
5 January 2022 – Coding Over Cocktails Podcast (Online): On 5 January 2022, 
12 January 2022 – Women Empowerment in Women20 (Online) – In the capacity of Co-head of EU Delegation and Co-chair of the G20 Women20 Italy Digital Equity Working Group, 
February 2022 – Staying Global While Staying Home (Online): 
15 February 2022 – W20 Indonesia Policy Dialogue: Freedom from Discrimination: (Likupang, Indonesia & Online): On 15 February 2022, 
8 March 2022 – IWD2022 Women in Diplomacy Luncheon (Brussels): On 8 March 2022, 
17 March 2022 – AWS #BreakTheBias Event (Brussels & Online): On 17 March 2022, 
