TU Dublin and the Mill Enterprise Centre host women entrepreneurs in green business across Europe
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TU Dublin and The Mill Enterprise Centre in Drogheda are the Irish partners in GREENWORAL, a project involving four universities and five enterprise partners funded under Erasmus+ of the European Commission. This project was established to support women in rural areas to develop green enterprise ideas. Rural women from four European countries joined the programme and completed a structured pre-enterprise programme. After this course completion, the entrepreneurs received mentoring to help bring their green ideas into viable businesses.
Green businesses emerging from this programme include forest bathing, organic farms and products, integrated digital platforms to improve wellbeing and green businesses in the creative sector.
In the week from 20th to 24th November 2023, TU Dublin and The Mill hosted 25 participants and their mentors from across Cyprus, Latvia, Spain and Ireland in a week packed full of educational, practical and cultural activities split between Dublin and Ireland’s Northeast region.
The week was an opportunity for the women to build on their prior training and mentoring experiences in a collaborative international learning environment. They were able to share ideas, learn from each other and build supportive networks across the European rural regions involved.
The GREENWORAL partner lead in TU Dublin is Dr Lucia Walsh, who shared her highlights from the week: ‘We loved hosting the first part of the week at TU Dublin. Our guests were very engaged in workshops such as on entrepreneurial resilience led by Dr Niamh Imbusch, and they also heard from inspiring fellow women leaders entrepreneur Anastasia Negru, TU Dublin’s Jennifer Boyer (VP for Sustainability) and Dr Etain Kidney (Head of School of Marketing & Entrepreneurship). Everyone’s feet were tapping during a brilliant musical performance of 12 very talented musicians from TU Dublin’s conservatoire led by Odhran O’Casaide.
Dr Deirdre McQuillan, also a board member of The Mill Enterprise Centre, shared her delight in noticing how, towards the end of the week, participants were actively engaging in conversations, sharing their business experiences and products and exchanging contact details with each other.
The OECD recognises women as one of the groups of Missing Entrepreneurs and can often be excluded from entrepreneurship by barriers such as a lack of access to funding or greater family responsibilities. For women in rural areas, in particular, the challenges are compounded by distance to support, social norms and attitudes.
TU Dublin and its partnership with The Mill Enterprise Centre for this GREENWORAL project provided the complimentary resources and capabilities that can facilitate reaching out to and engaging women in rural areas in educational and mentoring supports offered between TU Dublin and more locally The Mill.