Training and EU mentoring circle in Matera

Written by 50a50

Some 25 women from the Off The Beaten Track European project participated this week in a training activity in the beautiful town of Matera (Italy), organized by Materahub, the project’s leading partner.

Women representatives of the partners, women changemakers and women entrepreneurs from Italy, Spain, Slovakia and Estonia worked for three intense days, learning and networking, in a completely female environment that led to the generation of many complicities.

The sessions were organized into four thematic blocks with a unique and progressive thread towards the empowerment of all participants, both entrepreneurs and changemakers.

In the first block, the women entrepreneurs worked on their projects in small groups together with a changemaker, who acted as a mentor. After individual and group work, each entrepreneur presented the project to the entire audience, who also provided feedback to improve the projects. Some of these business ideas emerged in the local mentoring circle and are currently very advanced projects that will soon become a reality. The OTBT team is gratified to have played a role in supporting these women on part of their entrepreneurial journey!

A second block, which was developed in parallel to the previous one, focused on training in soft skills, based on the micro-learning content that the project has made available to everyone on the platform https://www.offthebt.eu/academy/. The partners LoovEesti, 50a50 and VisitKosice were in charge of providing these trainings, based on audiovisual content. Special work was done on the soft skills of communication, leadership, learning-to-learn and awareness, which the entrepreneurs had the opportunity to put into practice during the preparation and presentation of their projects.

A third block covered the analysis of the challenges that women entrepreneurs have in the labor market, both to entrepreneur and to achieve leadership positions in companies or institutions. In this sense, the four women changemakers, Iveta Ninajova (Slovakia), Kaydi Tomson (Estonia), Federica Quattroni (Italy) and Montse Moliné (Spain), were interviewed so that they could explain their impressive and inspiring trajectories, placing emphasis on how they have been able to combat the gender discrimination that still occurs in the labor market. Next, the partners presented some data on women entrepreneurs in their respective countries, to give the perspective of the national context and to be able to compare it with the rest of the nations at the European level. These national context reports will serve as a basis for the next phase of the project, in order to understand the needs that women have in the labor market.

In the fourth and last block, work began on the next activity of the project, named “Hack for Stay”. It will be an online EU-level hackathon inviting women to reshape the way women travel at European destinations, especially small villages and less-known areas, and make traveling smarter, sustainable and accessible for everyone. Looking ahead to this next phase, in Matera the women held a brainstorming session that will be the basis for “Hack for Stay”.

It was a truly enriching and inspiring activity for everyone, both the partners, the entrepreneurs and the changemakers.

On the first day, Materahub organized a networking dinner uniting the Off the Beaten Track (OTBT) and Grassroots projects, in honor of their shared purposes and topics. The Grassroots project focuses on Eco-health tourism, introducing new models of entrepreneurship education. Furthermore, on the third day, after completing the work program, the entire group enjoyed a tour of Matera, exploring its beautiful monuments and tourist sites!