Educational barriers for disadvantaged groups in entrepreneurship

Abstract

Entrepreneurship on the small and medium size is considered to be the 'economy engine', at the same time it represents a reservoir of jobs. Self employment through an entrepreneurial initiative for micro business could be a way of subsistence income generation. There are plenty of educational programs focused on entrepreneurial skills, but they are mainly focused on the educated segment of potential entrepreneurs to teach them how to start a business. Specific ones are addressed to youth to access programs that are financing start-ups for bachelor degree graduates. There are also disadvantaged groups, as women, Romany, migrating, refugees, persons over 50, unemployed in rural areas, persons with disabilities that are interested in finding a source of income by starting their own business, but they are facing with limited knowledge, less self-confidence, lack of fund and not supportive attitude of the environment. The ELIEMENTAL Braking Down Barriers for Enterprise Project aims to high light the barriers of the disadvantages groups from 4 countries (Greece, Poland, Romania, UK) in staring a micro business and designing a training program. Knowing the barriers, that are considered by the studied group to be most important issue that are keeping them away, give us the opportunity to act on and to design tools for overcoming. After analyzing the results of a survey on the barriers and need of the targeted groups, it was designed a training program with two components: a training course and a mentoring to be tested on the target groups. The results of the testing process were partially unexpected from the evaluation point of view of the skills improvement. It was offered a different approach angle and new issues of concern on the training process design. The paper is presenting the results of the training and the discussions about the mentoring process.