Young Women as Job Creators: First seminar on Women Entrepreneurship takes place in Spain

Barcelona, 15 May, 2013. The Union for the Mediterranean labelled project Young Women as Job Creators, promoted by the Association of Organisations of Mediterranean Businesswomen (AFAEMME), held its first Women Entrepreneurship Day on 15 of May 2013 in Barcelona. The seminar was organized by the Catalan Association of Business and Executive Women (ACEE) and hosted by the Universitat Internacional de Catalunya. It was attended by a large number of both, female and male students, from eight participating Spanish universities. The event opened with an intervention by Mr. Boris Dumančić from the Union for the Mediterranean, who conveyed the organization’s strong commitment to contribute to an enhanced woman entrepreneurship in the Euro-Mediterranean region with concrete and effective projects gathering civil society, governments and the private sector. The President of AFAEMME, Ms. Maria Helena de Felipe Lehtonen, called on the need to include more women in higher responsibility posts by motivating them to create their own businesses, contributing at the same time to the creation of jobs in the Euro-Mediterranean region. The Chairwomen of ACEE, Ms. Beatriz Fernández Tubau Rodés, highlighted the project’s potential of long-term sustainability by including more universities and additional countries in the project’s second phase.

The seminar provided the youths with information about the benefits they can draw from being entrepreneurs and motivated them to start up their own businesses after graduating from the university. They received concrete information about the process of setting up a company with two examples of young women entrepreneurs, acting as role models, who have recently started their private businesses in Spain. The two young women entrepreneurs presented their experiences in business creation, analysed benefits and the most striking obstacles they encountered in the process and provided the young participants with concrete and useful advice for business creation. The students were further assisted by professional business creation trainers who additionally motivated them for entrepreneurship and analysed the possibilities of their initial business ideas.

The enthusiasm of the participants of the first Women Entrepreneurship Day is a strong motivation both for AFAEMME and for the Union for the Mediterranean to continue supporting the development of women entrepreneurship in the Euro-Mediterranean region with quality projects. The next Women Entrepreneurship Days will be held between September and November 2013 in some 25 universities in Palestine, Morocco and Jordan.