4th Best national practice and experience from Greece

General information

Name of the good practice:	Women Do Business
Name of the organisations in charge:	Greek NPO (Non-Profit Organization) “Women Do Business”
Website of the organisation	https://womendobusiness.eu/ https://womendobusiness.eu/home-en/
E-mail of the organisation	info@womendobusiness.eu
City	Heraklion, Crete
Country	Greece
Year	May 2019
Length of the project/practice	ongoing
Is the project/practice ongoing?	Yes
Link to the training program
Language of the practice/program	Greek/English

Presentation/Description of the method:

Women Do Business is a Greek NPO (Non-Profit Organisation) which is against stereotypes and promotes female entrepreneurship through lots of actions and events, initially at the Region of Crete.
It started on May 2019, in Heraklion of Crete, by organizing a forum about the promotion of female entrepreneurship and evolved to being the 1st business incubator in Crete.
They present a modern holistic approach that supports their 4 Pillars of Actions (Inspirational & Motivation Events, Trainings, Networking and Mentoring/Coaching):

1.Empowerment:
Events of Inspiration – Motivation, such as events to highlight stories of women entrepreneurs & Interviews online from women entrepreneurs in Greece – highlighting Role Models

2.Education:
online or in person through Workshops and seminars

3.Mentoring-Guidance:
Support in practice the implementation of an idea through Incubator of Women Do Business. Basically, the purpose of a Business Incubator is to support new start-ups in order to begin their business path. The support it provides isn’t financial, as it doesn’t act as an investor, but is cognitive. It is the mediator for start-up members to get in touch with mentors, coaches, collaborators, organizations and in general anyone who can help with their progress. The project, Women Do Business, takes over this role and contact women who have an idea -preferably living in the Region of Crete- to share it and make their first step to implement their dream.

4.Networking:
Bringing people “close”, actions and initiatives

General objectives

Its goal is to inspire, but also to empower women in the field of business. At the same time, they organise events for women’s entrepreneurship, giving the opportunity to women who have succeeded and are active in the business world to share their story in a simple and direct way. Their objectives are:

to promote female entrepreneurship, the inspiration, mobilization, and support of women who want to implement their idea into business.
to change restrictive beliefs and stereotypes about women, to “highlight” and promote them into the business world.
to reduce business inequality and to contribute to the promotion of gender equality and the change of culture around women who are active in business.

Why it has been selected as good practice

“Women Do Business” has been selected as a good practice, for the following reasons:

The organization focuses on women who want to create their businesses. Win on-line project also has as target group women who wants to create their own e-business.
Mentoring is one of the activities, which is offered by the organization in trimestral periods. Win on-line project also include mentoring sessions with women who have specific business ideas, and they want to take the next step and create their own companies.

Final comments:

“Women Do Business” is a very active organization in empowering women to be entrepreneurs in the Southern Region of Crete.
Their contribution in the Female Entrepreneurship in Crete is 26.5% according to Data source: ICAP “Leading Women in Business” (2019).