Further to a very good event last year on the topic of women web-entrepreneurship, Ascend Consulting has been once again confirmed as the official Malta co-organiser of the Startup Europe Week – an annual European Commission backed initiative, this year taking place during the week 5th – 9th March 2018.
This year’s focus of the SEW2018 Malta event is Entrepreneurial Mentoring: Local experiences and needs.
As more and more local initiatives and programmes in support of entrepreneurship and startups are emerging, this event aims to facilitate an open discussion about the importance and challenges of entrepreneurial mentoring, as well as active networking for possible match-making between potential mentees and mentors.
A number of organisations, like the Junior Achievement Young Enterprise JAYE Malta Foundation, the MITA Innovation Hub, the University of Malta TAKEOFF incubator, etc., are already integrating and leveraging the mentoring concept within their entrepreneurial support programmes. However, notwithstanding successes and achievements, there is clearly also room for improvement in the scope, understanding and quality of such entrepreneurial mentoring relationships, and particularly in the number of people involved as mentors. Numerous studies and experiences worldwide have shown that entrepreneurial mentoring has significant long-term benefits for the financial viability of new ventures and wider socio-economic development at community level.
Therefore, the scope of our panel and open hall discussion is to get some insight into the way the current mentorship relationships panned out, any challenges that arose, what do the mentees need and what can the mentors offer, what is and should be the role of the facilitating startup support organisations, the perspective and expectations of finance providers and economic development agencies, etc. Diversity issues – the importance of increasing the number of women entrepreneurs, their active mentoring by both female and male mentors, awareness of gender-neutral language and attitudes – will be also considered.
The expected participants are startup communities, incubators and co-working spaces stakeholders, current and would be entrepreneurs, business, finance and marketing professionals that can act as role models and mentors, business angels and other finance providers, other entrepreneurship promoters and supporters, including the media.
With the support of APS Bank, eSkills Malta Foundation, 100 Women in Finance and the Women Web-entrepreneurs Hubs European Network that Ascend Consulting is representing in Malta, the event will take place on Wednesday 7th March 2018 at the MITA Data Centre in St. Venera, starting at 15:00.
Participation is free of charge. However due to seating restrictions, prior registration is required by email to anamaria@ascendconsulting.eu.