YTKO is leading a new collaborative project, Accelerating Women’s Enterprise, (AWE), to help women living in some of the regions either side of the English Channel to increase their personal skills and develop business ideas and knowledge. They are supported via training, workshops, face-to-face advice, mentoring and online learning – all specifically developed for women.

The Accelerating Women’s Enterprise (AWE) programme aims to address the gender imbalance in enterprise start-up, the service provision void for disadvantaged women and the lack of capacity in the enterprise support ecosystem.

Our priority is to support disadvantaged women into enterprise and to increase the sustainability of struggling early stage women-owned and led businesses.

Through AWE, via tailored and intensive support, the woman and her enterprise will be developed in parallel. YTKO is delighted to be part of the consortium of French and UK partners delivering this service.

The programme results, learning content, research, mentor-bank and resources will all be brought together in a ‘Starter kit’ which will be freely available to any stakeholder or organisation that wants to improve its services to female entrepreneurs.

AWE is supported by the Interreg France (Channel) England programme, who are contributing €2,641,184.73 of European Regional Development Funds, and which aims to address economic and social issues in regions on either side of the Channel.

Our goals are to create 35 hours of new learning content, train 700 female entrepreneurs, recruit and train over 160 mentors, help 134 women to start new businesses, and carry out new research into women’s enterprise which will be published to assist future planning for supporting female entrepreneurs.