A programme intended to help women establish or grow small businesses in Gaeltacht areas is to expand with the organisers hoping to support more than 100 female entrepreneurs over the next three years.
Údarás na Gaeltachta is partnering with the Atlantic and Munster Technological Universities to run the newly enlarged Empower Cumasú programmes, with a strand that will target women starting their ventures and one, providing support by experienced women entrepreneurs, for those looking to scale up businesses.
A pilot programme run last year helped 15 women who went on to establish businesses in a range of areas including tourism and the small-scale manufacture of clothing.
The course ran for 12 weeks and involved a mix of online and in-person presentations intended to allow the participants to engage with it while also allowing them to balance any existing work or family commitments.
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The participants were drawn from across Galway and Mayo. The expanded scheme will be open to women living across these and other Gaeltacht areas in Donegal, Kerry, Cork, Waterford and Meath.
The enlarged programme, which is free, will be based at the Atlantic Technological University’s (ATU) innovation hubs and Munster Technological University’s Rubicon Centre in Cork.
Maria Staunton of ATU says the programmes aim to encourage and build on the success of last year’s pilot and capitalise on an employment landscape that was significantly changed by remote working and the development of hubs through Covid.
“We have seen a lot of people move from east to west over the past few years and major changes in areas like Achill or Belmullet but there needs to be jobs in these areas if we are to sustain that … We hope to attract around 90 women to the start-up programmes and two groups of 12 to the Empower Growth ones. And while many of them will be focused of employing themselves or a small number of other people into the future … We’re very positive about women [who have] the potential to do that in the future and helping them get started is the first step,” she said.
Údarás na Gaeltachta chief executive Tomás Ó Síocháin said the programme was geared to help participants “draw on the often untapped talent among a huge swathe of the population … Cumasú is the first step, we hope of many, for female entrepreneurs and Údarás is working on the next steps for those entrepreneurs as they seek to bring novel ideas to life.”
Details of the programmes are available at empowerprogramme.ie
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