training

The Case for Women’s Enterprise

The Case for Women’s Enterprise is a comprehensive toolkit and resource pack for business support providers and advisers. It has been developed by the DTI’s Small Business Service in association with PROWESS and it provides advice, guidance and
ideas on how to support more effectively women starting and growing businesses. The Case consists of eight key elements which correspond to the main entrepreneurial development milestones such as pre-start and access to finance. It also contains useful reference guides to organisations, web-sites, acronyms, jargon and includes a bibliography. In addition, there is a review booklet which assists advisers to assess their current business support services against PROWESS best practice criteria.

This facilitated training workshop provides an introduction to the toolkit contents and an opportunity for interaction and discussion on support for women’s enterprise. Principally aimed at mainstream business support providers who may have limited experience of providing targeted services for women, and who may not have previously considered segmenting their client needs using a gender perspective.

		training Tuesday 9 November


			Two high quality and relevant training opportunities were offered to delegates who wished to extend their conference and incorporate some continuous professional development. These proved very popular and were well attended.
			Gender Lens for Business Support The Gender Lens for Business Support is an invaluable tool for all individuals and organisations supporting women in enterprise. It is an intensive and highly interactive one day course which looks at the issues facing women in business, the ways business support organisations, banks, accountants and other professionals can best support women in pre-start, start up and development phases of their businesses and looks at what women want from business support. The Gender Lens uses a combination of presentation, case study discussion, audience presentation and workbook self assessment. Delegate feedback from Gender Lens: "It provided a very helpful insight into ways and methods that can be built into our pre-start and start-up offering." Siobhan O'Driscoll, Projects Manager, Business Startup@Leeds Met. " We have gained inspiration to go home and develop something similar." Cecilia Boström, Country Administrative Board of Sudermanland, Sweden. "It was very useful to compare what we currently do to what we could be doing through the use of the Gender Lens tool and speaking to others. The videos were excellent, they broke up the sessions well and were extremely positive examples." Sally Randall, Enterprise Development Officer, WEETU
			The Case for Women’s Enterprise The Case for Women’s Enterprise is a comprehensive toolkit and resource pack for business support providers and advisers. It has been developed by the DTI’s Small Business Service in association with PROWESS and it provides advice, guidance and ideas on how to support more effectively women starting and growing businesses. The Case consists of eight key elements which correspond to the main entrepreneurial development milestones such as pre-start and access to finance. It also contains useful reference guides to organisations, web-sites, acronyms, jargon and includes a bibliography. In addition, there is a review booklet which assists advisers to assess their current business support services against PROWESS best practice criteria. This facilitated training workshop provides an introduction to the toolkit contents and an opportunity for interaction and discussion on support for women’s enterprise. Principally aimed at mainstream business support providers who may have limited experience of providing targeted services for women, and who may not have previously considered segmenting their client needs using a gender perspective.
		For further information about PROWESS training contact Sarah McPherson, Quality Manager at PROWESS email: s.mcpherson@prowess.org.uk or tel: 01603 762355 For further information about "The Case for Women's Enterprise" contact Andrew Whitnell at SBS email: andrew.whitnell@sbs.gsi.gov.uk or tel: 0207 215 8097