Project: Women Entrepreneurship: A Job Creation Engine for South East Europe
In the framework of the Regional Project „WE: A Job Creation Engine for South East Europe“ organized by the Gender Task Force (GTF), with the support of KAGIDER – Women Entrepreneurs Association of Turkey, under the auspices of the Regional Cooperation Council (RCC), funded by the Swedish Development Agency (SIDA), held on February 3-5, 2014 in Hotel Marti, in Istanbul, Turkey.
The Conference was preceded by a Project Stakeholder Meeting attended by: SBA coordinators, SIDA, RCC, GTF and SEECEL representatives. The Stakeholder Meeting served to present project achievements and outcomes on national and regional levels, as well as recommendations for further activities.
The Conference was attended by National Small Business Act Coordinators, Women Business Association Representatives, Entrepreneurs and Experts. The Conference was opened by Kagider President, Ms Gulden Turktan followed by opening remarks from RCC, SIDA and GTF representatives. The Keynote Speech entitled ‘It’s not a gender issue – it’s an economic one!’ was delivered by Ms Madi Sharma, Member of The European Economic and Social Committee, emphasizing the Strategic role of women entrepreneurs in the European economic recovery and growth. The Conference continued with a presentation by Ms Efka Heder, SEECEL Director, providing an overview of the implemented activities, concrete results and future steps to make within the framework of the WE project.
In the first Panel, SBA coordinators and experts from 9 SEE countries presented progress in WE policies, strategies and databases in SEE.
In the following Panel, experts from Croatia, Turkey and Albania spoke about the future of WE networking in SEE and EU, with global perspectives, after which participants engaged in a fruitful discussion.
The third and final Panel on Women Entrepreneurship and Social Entrepreneurship: EU Experience and opportunities for SEE brought useful insights on the trends and practices in the EU from prominent experts and officials from Poland, UK and Croatia, after which the Conference concluded with the future Project plans and actions.
The Conference provided an exchange of experience and best practices of significant importance for the SEE Region, in the context of the new EU and SEE 2020 Strategy and provided an opportunity to establish a regional „state of the art“ for policies, strategies, databases, networking and other advances on Women Entrepreneurship in the 9 Project Participating Countries (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, FYRoM, Kosovo*, Montenegro, Moldova, Serbia and Turkey), as well as Bulgaria, Poland and United Kingdom.
The Conference served as a preparation for the WE Project SEE Ministerial and Final Conference on Women Entrepreneurship in 2015. Contributions from the Conference will be integrated into an EU/SEE WE Best Policy Practices Publication to be finalized and published in April 2014.