"The COVID-19 pandemic is a health tragedy, but also a human, economic and social tragedy that deepens the inequalities already at work in our societies and makes it difficult for thousands of European citizens to have regular access to employment and education. In this context, women who were already suffering from structural inequalities affecting all areas of their lives are at increased risk of being relegated to the margins of society, to extreme poverty and swept away by a vicious circle of downgrading from which they may take years to emerge. This is why ensuring their access to education so that they can continue to learn throughout their lives and particularly at this moment of rare intensity is absolutely key both to ensuring their dignity and empowerment, but also to supporting resilient, fair and sustainable growth in the European Union.Our ""Bookpower"" project (BPO) is part of this dynamic of training women to help them create, maintain and strengthen their empowerment through the combined power of culture and creativity. Drawing on the expertise of six European structures active in the sectors of culture and non-formal adult education, it consists of producing and making available to around a hundred vulnerable women in four European countries - France, Italy, Spain and Belgium - an innovative training programme based on books, bibliotherapy and cognitive sciences. In these countries, we target women between 18 and 65 years old in their local contexts:In Paris, women who are victims of violence (domestic violence has increased by about 30% during the crisis in France) and who wish to rebuild their lives through entrepreneurship thanks to the partner structure, Led By Her. In Madrid, low-income women from the popular Carabanchel neighbourhood via Espacio Rojo. In O Courel in Galicia, rural women, sometimes far from digital practices thanks to the intervention of the Uxío Novoneyra Foundation. In Palermo, in a multicultural city, migrant women and/or women in economic difficulties, unemployed or single mothers with low incomes through the field knowledge of e-arch. With this project we want to respond to the needs of vulnerable women in terms of - inclusion by connecting them to each other in order to create social bonds of mutual support, solidarity and shared values.- employability through access to a training path that develops their skills, helps them find a job or become entrepreneurs,- personal development and fulfilment through empowering pedagogical tools to overcome their limitations, become aware of their potential, engage, innovate and take action through the power of culture and creativity.Alongside the women involved, we train and hire around fifteen trainers and socio-educational facilitators in bibliotherapy, a new method of non-formal education, originating from the book sector and based on innovative neurocognitive approaches. Beyond the quality of the transmission, the link we are establishing with the trainers will allow us :- to enrich their methodological palette with approaches based on current disciplines, in full development, such as the cognitive sciences - to test innovative educational tools for vulnerable groups- to recharge their batteries, get inspired and work together to motivate each other, share good practices and contribute to the pioneer dimension of their sector - strengthen their skills in digital technologies and tools All this in a fast and connected age that invites us to remain curious and open-minded about pedagogy and methods of skills development. Training the trainers to train vulnerable women for empowerment is at the heart of our project from which we expect a behavioural impact, namely the stimulation of women's empowerment, their taking initiative in professional matters, the strengthening of their self-confidence, the development of their civic commitment and the fulfilment generated by regular access to the sources of beauty and inspiration that abound in the world of books.At the end of our project, via a new digital platform bringing together services, content and a learning path, these women and educators will have grown up together, adopted the method and will act as relays to disseminate it and make it last throughout Europe. In order to support this dynamic, the project will give rise to a dissemination kit, an empirical research article and the prospect of creating a network of various stakeholders dedicated to bibliotherapy within the framework of a discipline still to be structured and explored: educational cognitive sciences."

MOVE IT FORWARD + is a project aiming to innovate and to support organisations in the field of entrepreneurship support and education, with a focus on women participants and digital entrepreneurship.Indeed, the EU commission reports states that women’s intellectual and entrepreneurial potential, contribution and creativity is still largely an under-exploited source of economic growth. Women still make only a third of business owners in the EU,(34.4% of the EU self-employed and 30% of start-up entrepreneurs - 'Statistical data on Women entrepreneurs in Europe') and, tend to run smaller businesses than men. The Global Entrepreneurship Monitoring (2017) report also shows that the share of young female entrepreneurs is almost two times smaller than the share of men. (5.9% females, 12.5% men). Women are better educated than men in Europe , therefore they are part of the « missing entrepreneurs » in Europe as explained in OCDE reports and policy recommendations. More women entrepreneurs, beyond gender equality, means: jobs creation, robust (and sustainable) economics growth, social progress, impact for communities and economic independence for women.The goal of the project is to develop methodologies and offer new range of activities in the field of collaboration, mentoring and developing relationships with the private sector and, with a focus on women looking to launch (digital) entrepreneurship projects. From the starting point of an existing concept, the Erasmus+ project wants to enhance practices, to enrich from collaboration and partner experiences, and finally to multiply and sustain impact.Move it forward + project partnership is made of six entrepreneurial organisations from six EU countries but the clear goal is to make all results available to a broad number of organisations to benefit from Move it Forward + in other countries, in EU and beyond.The project deliverable includes:- Creation of a Move It Forward platform and network for organisation wanted to act in the field of women entrepreneurship support:- Duplication of collaborative design, duplicate a concept of hackathon, entrepreneurship support and mentoring methodologies- Toolkit to develop sustainability via mentor-ship, involvement of the private sector especially Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) - Piloting and evaluating at national level for more than 200 participants.The project implementation imply active involvement of a large number of participant in the projects and include as six dissemination events and one training activities for adult education staff.The project is designed to have a direct impact on:- adult education organisations- trainers, mentors, facilitators.- women learners and (future) entrepreneurs- broader communities, stakeholders and entrepreneurship ecosystem as well as organisations outside the partnership countries.Move It Forward+ will also offer a website where all the produced material will be made available, as well as social media activities on the theme on (digital) women entrepreneurship.The project clearly also aim to create a sustainability and its results, especially the tool kits and the guidelines, as well as the knowledge gained by organisations and participants, to be used and implemented further after the end of the project.

<< Background >>Almost one in three women (30 % of women aged 15 and older) in the world has experienced physical and/or sexual violence (WHO, 2013). One of the side-effects of the Covid-19 pandemic and its related state-at-home orders is a global rise in intra-family and domestic violence. A 60% increase in emergency calls from women subjected to violence by their intimate partner has been reported in Europe (BMJ 2020;369:m1872). Career development and career planning, daily work activities, career advancement, career identity, professional reputation, and opportunities for career advancement are affected during abusive relationships. Survivors of domestic violence are employed in higher numbers in casual and part-time work, and their earnings are up to 60 per cent lower, compared to women who do not experience such violence (UN Women, 2016b; Vyas, 2013). This abuse also continues to affect victim’s physical and mental health, financial stability, and support network, affecting their career trajectory over time. EASE explicitly recognizes that situations of violence and abuse may be suffered by men as well as by women, and may be suffered inside or outside the home, but focuses on women survivors of domestic abuse.Gaining financial independence is one of the most effective ways for abused people to break the long-term hold of domestic abuse and violence on their lives. When they control their access to fundamentals like food, clothing and shelter, and feel valued by their income and autonomy, they can contemplate their future with a renewed vision. They are more able to leave and stay out of abusive relationships. Less recognised, however, is the role entrepreneurship can play in gaining that financial freedom. While entrepreneurship requires material resources, mental strength and even physical stamina, in most cases, domestically abused people desperately lack one of these assets if not all because the domination they have endured. Nevertheless, business ownership can be a more viable path than conventional employment. Years of domestic violence leave abused people with spotty employment records that can get in the way of landing a job. Entrepreneurship can allow these people to sidestep some of these barriers. Learning to become an entrepreneur can also offer opportunities to restore a sense of self and mend broken self-confidence (Byrne, Shantz & Bullough, 2018). The EASE project represents an opportunity to assist survivors of domestic violence in their recovery and professional reintegration. Furthermore, it is an opportunity for some of the participating higher education institutions (MBS, IPAG and UNYP) to enrich their curricula and offer new education pathways for adults that have left school. Designing a new curriculum for the EASE project will allow them to question and improve their existing curricula on entrepreneurship and/or offer a new tailored programme to adults from vulnerable groups in their region. The NGO and think tank TY has already acquired extensive experience with teaching entrepreneurship to various groups with different challenges and cultural backgrounds, but has not adopted the tailored approach that EASE will allow them to test. EASE will also represent an opportunity to discover the needs, challenges and wishes of this specific target group. The remaining NGOs of the project aim to offer new opportunities to survivors of domestic violence, to assist them in their recovery and empower them through entrepreneurship. For BGRF, EASE is a new opportunity to assist survivors through entrepreneurship, while for LBH it is the opportunity to test their existing entrepreneurship training approach on an international scale.<< Objectives >>The EASE project aims to develop a training programme specifically designed to facilitate the adoption of this entrepreneurial identity after surviving domestic violence, that can be replicated across Europe.Its objectives are the following:•Co-creating a tailored programme to answer the specific training needs of adult survivors of domestic violence in 3 European countries;•Making high-quality entrepreneurship training accessible for adults that are no longer in the academic system in higher education institutions;•Empowering survivors of domestic violence through entrepreneurship training;•Facilitating entrepreneurship for survivors of domestic violence through tailored training and mentoring for incubation;<< Implementation >>The EASE project will implement activities for the co-creation of a training programme, to pilot entrepreneurship training and mentoring in 3 countries and for the replication of its approach across Europe. It will recruit participants and develop a questionnaire that will be translated before facilitating 3 co-creation workshops in France, Czech Republic and Bulgaria. The feedback from these workshops will be compiled and analysed, to develop suggest a co-creation methodology (PR1) and develop a tailored entrepreneurship training programme (PR2) including the development of a business idea, of soft and hard skills. Once developed, the programme will be translated while teachers and learners are recruited for pilots in the 3 different countries. The 6 month training programme will be taught at IPAG in France, UNYP in Czech Republic and at TY’s mobile entrepreneurship school in Bulgaria. This pilot will allow the project partners to gather feedback on the programme to improve it. The partners will distribute certificates to learners upon completion. In parallel to this training, learners will receive coaching and business mentoring. This mentoring will continue for the participants wishing to launch their start-ups after the training. This coaching and mentoring will also represent an opportunity to collect feedback and share the lessons learned (PR3). Finally, a replication guide (PR4) will be developed to allow the EASE approach to be replicated across Europe.<< Results >>During the project, the consortium will design and test: a method for co-creation (PR1), a tailored training programme for business idea development and hard and soft skill development (PR2), a method to mentor survivors of domestic violence (PR3) and to replicate the EASE approach (PR4) that will continue to be available after the project’s completion. These project results will rely on intelligence provided by the participants in the co-creation workshops and the learners during the project. Their feedback will allow the partners to tailor and improve their approach, but it can also be used to better understand survivors of domestic violence in their various cultural contexts. The empowerment and upskilling of the learners in the 3 pilots implemented in France, Czech Republic and Bulgaria will be outcomes of the EASE project, as well as the new careers in entrepreneurship that will hopefully arise. During the final year of the project, it is expected that some of the learners will launch their start-ups, thanks to the training programme, the mentorship and the partners’/project’s network of incubators. These new start-ups are also project outcomes. Finally, the training programme will continue in France after the project’s completion, and the empowered and upskilled survivors, the new entrepreneurs and start-ups generated by this training after the project’s end will be direct outcomes of its implementation.