Women Directors in Malta organizes a US-led course for aspiring women entrepreneurs
NGO Women Directors in Malta (WDM) was founded in 2015 to act as a pressure group to promote more women in decision-making positions. More female than male students have graduated from the University of Malta since 1996, so after 25 years, more key positions are expected to be filled by more women.
However, this is not the case. In fact, Malta achieves only 37.5 in the strength indicator of the index of the European Institute for Gender Equality. The EU as a whole is the weakest in this area, averaging 55.
One of the EU projects that WDM is committed to is the development of an online course, entitled ‘Women in Power’, which provides an introduction to the themes and concepts of gender equality. It was run by a Spanish entity and seven partners participated in the project.
WDM’s latest project is the Academy of Women Entrepreneurs (AWE) course, which aims to provide women with knowledge on how to create and run their own business. The course is sponsored by the United States Department of State and is provided in more than 70 countries worldwide. WDM is the first entity to facilitate this course in Malta.
The Academy for Women Entrepreneurs (AWE) course aims to provide women with knowledge on how to create and run their own business.
The course itself is run by Thunderbird Global School of Management at the University of Arizona. It is provided through online modules, which deal with different aspects of running a business, including marketing, finance and human resources.
Each week, two WDM facilitators, Rose Marie Azzopardi and Sonya Sammut, met online with the participants and provided the Maltese perspective. They added the material presented in the online modules and colored the meetings with guest speakers from different areas of the business. The two-hour meetings were interactive and gave participants the opportunity to discuss their business potential.
During the course, participants also developed their own business plan. At the end of the course, a competition was held where participants presented their business plans and submitted their ideas to an adjudication panel composed of representatives from Malta Enterprise, the University of Malta and the US Embassy. in Malta. Three winners were provided with US $ 2,000 each as seed money.
The certificate ceremony for the 24 AWE graduates was held on 10 December, announcing the three winners of the competition. Afterwards, a reception was held, sponsored by the US Embassy in Malta. During the event, WDM President Azzopardi thanked the US Embassy in Malta for their hospitality, for making the AWE program available to women in Malta, and for their assistance during the program during the -2021.
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