There is still an onus on rural Irish businesses to catch up with their urban counterparts in terms of digitisation, according to Brendan Mulroy, project officer at Irish Rural Link, which is in partnership with the Digital Entrepreneurship for Women (DEW) initiative.
“Very significant resources are devoted to the digitisation effort, and it’s crucial that programmes are both gender and rural proofed,” he said.
“With full employment, the potential of rural female entrepreneurship to offer flexibility and financial independence has never been greater.”
The DEW project, funded by the European Union’s Erasmus+ programme, finished the final component of its programme, the policy recommendations and guidelines for further uptakes.
With this final step, the DEW project ended on November 1, marking a key milestone in the promotion of women’s entrepreneurship in a post-pandemic world.
There were three Irish partners in the project: Longford Women’s Link; Maynooth University; and Irish Rural Link.
“The DEW project stands out for its ability to meet the challenges faced by women aspiring to create and develop their own businesses.
“DEW is aimed at all women entrepreneurs whatever their sector of activity. It offers educational resources, training and policy recommendations to support women seeking to set up their own businesses,” Brendan added.
Digitisation
The DEW project is closely aligned with the key priorities of the Erasmus+ programme, incorporating inclusion and diversity in education and training, digital transformation, adapting vocational training to the needs of the labour market, and increasing the flexibility of vocational training opportunities.
DEW sets out to tackle the problem of social and economic exclusion of women, particularly those from marginalised backgrounds who have no access to resources to acquire or strengthen their entrepreneurial skills.
DEW’s Open Educational Resources (OER) were designed to be accessible and significantly enhance opportunities for women entrepreneurs while strengthening project partners, as well as providing local, national and European entrepreneurship support.
The initiative is rooted in supporting digital entrepreneurship and offering opportunities to increase digital skills.
DEW resources aim to be a strong asset for female users and to contribute to policy by applying a gender perspective to the ENTRECOMP framework.
The project creates a pan-European ‘Community of Practice’ on the issue, by consolidating learning and resulting in a format that can enrich and strengthen new policy initiatives in the field of women’s entrepreneurship.
The pandemic, Brendan said, had dramatically accelerated digitisation of Irish enterprise, both urban and rural: “This trend will continue as more services move online.
“While the provision of adequate broadband had been a challenge for rural enterprise, this is now starting to change with the rollout of the National Broadband Plan.
“Regardless of business type, investment in rural enterprise digitisation is vital. Investment in training and upskilling is at least as necessary as financial.
“The DEW project, in offering a free flexible practical training solution of transformative value to female led rural Irish businesses, is part of the solution.”
The project allows rural female entrepreneurs access to free training material in their own time that will help them improve the online presence of their business.
“The training modules are easy to use and can be done in your own time. The training is flexible for you to do all the modules, or the ones that are most relevant or you need extra support with,” Brendan continued.
The DEW project celebrated its closing with a final trans-national meeting in Malaga, where the Spanish partner, IWS, warmly welcomed all partners.
The meeting was an opportunity to share achievements and prospects for the future of women’s entrepreneurship in Europe.
All training modules and other material will be available to use for the next two years on the project website.
Further information on the DEW programme is available from Moate, Co. Westmeath-based Irish Rural Link.