NEWS 09/13/2023

EU Projects: Granting Access to Employment and Entrepreneurship in Agriculture for Women

Inspired by our vision to create a more sustainable pathway to employment, especially for vulnerable groups, SkillLab is involved in another EU-funded project that focuses on empowering women in agriculture and agribusiness. The Granting Access to Employment and Entrepreneurship in Agriculture for women (GAEA) project aims to inspire, mentor, empower and train women, especially those who are neither in employment nor in education (NEET) and/or have a migrant background, to perceive entrepreneurship as a valid career choice. The project also aims to support these women to grow as successful, confident and resourceful entrepreneurs with a digital mindset and the ability to innovate, protect the environment, generate sustainable growth and employment in rural areas across EU countries.

GAEA’s project objectives can be summed up as follows:

Empowering women from rural areas on the skills, knowledge, values and attitudes to pursue opportunities to be entrepreneurial, innovative and generate sustainable growth and employment in agriculture, agrifood and agrotourism.
Improving the framework conditions and personal and societal mindsets to strengthen resilience, boost innovation, enhance the digital transformation and achieve more responsive, cohesive and future-proof rural communities.
Promoting new professional pathways and tailored career counseling, guidance and mentoring for women in rural areas by linking training and educational contents to skills that can be easily understood by the labor market, thus making up- and re-skilling processes an important tool to reduce skills gaps and tackle skills mismatches.
Building a long-lasting multidisciplinary and multi stakeholder Alliance that can co-create and transfer knowledge and exchange practices to solve societal challenges and labor market needs, and advocate for more informed policies concerning the role of women in agripreneurship, agrifood and agrotourism.
Enhancing the cooperation between education and training, research, labor market, the public sector and the business sector to foster the adoption of common European competence frameworks (with special reference to EntreComp and DigComp) and instruments (such as ESCO) that increase transparency and recognition of skills.

In addition to NEET and migrant women, GAEA's direct beneficiaries include university students, university staff and the academic community, as well as vocational trainers and professionals providing career guidance services.

GAEA brings together 13 partner organizations from 11 countries, including SkillLab. We contribute to this project by doing skill-profiling with the participating women so they can create a valid skill profile and CV, which help them acknowledge specific training needs, connect to tailored career counseling, mentoring, and link them to education and job opportunities by paying attention to skill gaps and skill mismatches.

Recently, the GAEA project has already conducted an extensive training need analysis which includes the identification of the target groups’ characteristics, learning preferences, training and support needs, knowledge and skills deficits and requirements, as well as business profiles and acknowledged competences. In addition, GAEA has developed a training programme structure to effectively fill the gap left by existing training offers in the participating countries. This comprehensive programme addresses women both in higher education and VET, as well as VET trainers and career counselors.

Read our newsletter below to learn more about what we have done so far and to follow our progress in GAEA:

Newsletter January - June 2023

Nederlands

English

Newsletter July - December 2023

Nederlands

English

Project Details

Name: Granting Access to Employment & Entrepreneurship in Agriculture for women (GAEA)

Funding: Erasmus+ Alliances for Innovation

Project duration: 36 months

Start date: 07/2022