Equal - Digital Repository

Background

Promoting enterprise, innovation and productivity is a central objective for both the UK Government and the devolved administrations in Scotland and Wales. UK enterprise policy recognises the importance of self-employment as a flexible way to widen the world of work to include groups facing barriers to access. Women, for example, now set up 30 percent of new small businesses. The 2003 Scottish Enterprise Strategy cites two factors to be key to generating entrepreneurial dynamism:  the need to actively encourage more people to start businesses and the need to increase the contribution of education to the development of entrepreneurship. Equal Enterprise Scotland is a dynamic Partnership made up of ten organisations across Scotland, all working together to promote new business creation and continued growth in disadvantaged communities.

Aims 

The underlying project rationale is to establish strategic organisational frameworks within which to design, test and promote methods and approaches to generating enterprise and business creation and to address the imbalance in business creation rates within disadvantaged areas and groups.

Objectives

• Disseminate information about entrepreneurship to identified target groups, policy representatives and mainstream support organisations
• Promote entrepreneurial skills through education and promotional activities
• Review and extend existing project management structures, procedures and plans at national and transnational levels, with particular focus on rural inclusion within a hub and spoke model
• Develop entrepreneurial learning networks at local and transnational levels
• Train trainers and develop a coordinated infrastructure within Education, Business, and Public Sector Agencies to support the development of entrepreneurial skills
• Share best practice, expertise and resources created and developed in conjunction with other network partners
• Develop support frameworks that promote entrepreneurship, social enterprise creation and regulatory requirements in conjunction with trainers and target groups
• Organise a series of training actions and debates on project findings with key stakeholders.

Target Groups

• Unemployed
• People with disabilities including mental health problems
• People living in rural isolation