1st Best national practice and experience from Spain

General information

Name of the good practice:	Emekin; emakume ekintzailea, mujer emprendedora
Name of the organisations in charge:	Diputación Foral de Gipuzkoa (Gipuzkoa Province Government) together with the Association of Professionals, Entrepreneurs and Directors of Gipuzkoa, Aspegi, Laboral Kutxa and the European Social Fund.
Website of the organisation	www.gipuzkoa.eus
E-mail of the organisation	emekin@gipuzkoa.eus
City	Donostia-San Sebastian
Country	Spain
Year	2008
Length of the project/practice	12 years
Is the project/practice ongoing?	YES
Link to the training program	www.gipuzkoa.eus/es/web/ekintzailea/emekin
Language of the practice/program	Spanish, Basque

Presentation/Description of the method

EMEKIN is a programme intended to women with a business idea, as it aims to promote job creation in the Historic Territory of Gipuzkoa by promoting business projects promoted by women.

General objectives

The initiative consists mainly in creating a feasibility plan together, and monitoring and mentoring the project, following the steps below:

INITIAL ORIENTATION: Know, guide and evaluate.

Women entrepreneurs will be attended in a personal interview at ASPEGI offices and will be guided in relation to key elements of their business ideas. The project will be evaluated and whether or not to be incorporated into the Emekin Programme will be decided.

SUPPORT FOR DECISION-MAKING: Enterprise project.

With the help of Goieki, will be developed an Enterprise Project that incorporates a viability plan and a financing plan that allows enough arguments to make a decision with a higher level of knowledge and security. In short, it is about helping them to approach a deep reflection with qualified support that allows a clear plan of the project, the starting point and its possible evolution. In parallel and/or complementary way, women entrepreneurs engaged in the development of the business plan will be able to participate in training actions and entrepreneurial skills.

MENTORING AND FOLLOW-UP: Support and training.

Projects that after developing a feasibility plan continue and become a company, will continue receiving the support of the EMEKIN Programme, entering to the so-called Mentoring and Monitoring step. The objectives pursued by this step of Monitoring and Mentoring are to continue accompanying in a qualified way the female entrepreneur in these first months of implementation where the doubts, the fears, the uncertainty are still alive.

Why it has been selected as good practice

The main reason why it has been selected as a good practice is that it is a project created by women and aimed also at them, besides being a very complete program that starts from an initial consultancy, offers viability plans, financing, etc. Beyond the creation of businesses, it helps these women entrepreneurs by offering advice and also accompaniment throughout the creation process and subsequent stages. In addition to all this, it should be added that the project is supported by very important institutions and entities, such as the Provincial Council of Gipuzkoa together with the Association of Professionals, Entrepreneurs and Directors of Gipuzkoa (ASPEGI), the credit union Laboral Kutxa and the European Social Fund. This helps to make the project more visible in different areas of society.

Final comments

The Emekin program is a reference at the local and provincial level in entrepreneurship for women. At the level of the Basque Country, on the other hand, we can find similar programmes, for example, in Bizkaia, which has an association called EmakumeEkin, which was born with the aim of supporting women entrepreneurs and bringing the possibility of entrepreneurship to all women.