News
Ethnic entrepreneurship: breaking the barriers
April 2007
On the 7th of March 2007 around seventy representatives of EQUAL
projects, business support organisations, Danish authorities and governmental
bodies as well as ethnic groups from all over Europe met in Copenhagen with the
explicit aim of "breaking down the barriers" surrounding ethnic
entrepreneurship. The conference was part of the activities organised by the
transnational EQUAL project "Building
Entrepreneurship" which has partners in Denmark, Spain and Hungary.
Dina Kristina Kesic, Head of Knowledge Centre for Ethnic Entrepreneurship,
EVU, the Danish lead partner of the project, launched the seminar by posing the
challenge of how the valuable insights into ethnic minority entrepreneurship
were going to be taken up at EU level now that the EQUAL programme is ending.
She explained that they had taken to heart the messages made a year ago in
Amsterdam in a previous EQUAL seminar on "Building the tools for opening up
entrepreneurship for all". In her view, entrepreneurship was one of the main
routes for the integration of ethnic minorities into the labour market and
broader society. In the current context, it was important for all the tools for
breaking down the barriers to ethnic minority entrepreneurship be used as widely
as possible.
Participants at the Conference on "Breaking the Barriers" in Copenhagen
The project manager at EVU Business Centre, Mr Shahriar Shams Ili, then gave
an overview of some of the tools and practices the project had developed in
Denmark over the last two years. These include new methods for reaching out and
offering business advice to ethnic entrepreneurs "on location" and employing
business advisors from the same communities as the entrepreneurs.
Visions for an inclusive entrepreneurship programme
Peter Stub Jørgensen, Director in DG Employment, Social Affairs and Equal
Opportunities at the European Commission replied that the Commission was very
conscious of the importance of both understanding and removing all the obstacles
to entrepreneurship for disadvantaged groups - and particularly for ethnic
minorities. He explained that the Commission would like EQUAL to create a new
platform for the exchange of good practices in the field of opening up
entrepreneurship to all members of society.
The starting point was to ensure that the lessons from EQUAL and other pilot
projects on entrepreneurship were integrated into national and regional
programmes funded under the next round of the Structural Funds. He said that
EQUAL had shown that it was possible to break down the barriers to
entrepreneurship in four key areas: strengthening the culture for
entrepreneurship, integrating business support, opening the access to
appropriate finance and improving sustainability of start-ups.
Mr Jørgensen explained that since the EQUAL Conference held in Amsterdam last
year, several European Social Fund (ESF) Managing Authorities have formed a
"Community of Practice" on "Inclusive Entrepreneurship".
One of the first tasks of the Community of Practice is to develop a European
screening instrument for assessing the strengths and weaknesses of
entrepreneurship strategies from the point of view of people who face
discrimination in the labour market. This will be linked to a bank of good
practice so that any country, region or city that detects a particular gap in
its policies can pull down a menu of possible solutions that have been tested in
other places.
The Community of Practice will also examine how certain countries and regions
have woven these strands of good practice into broader strategies for inclusive
entrepreneurship which respond to some of the key labour market problems facing
Europe today. The information will be used as a basis for making recommendations
for the next round of the Structural Funds.
Peter Stub
Jørgensen and Shahriar Shams Ili closing the first part of the conference
Mr Jørgensen explained that the German Presidency is preparing a Policy Forum
to be held in Hannover on the 5-6th June 2007, on "Entrepreneurship
to all" where different EQUAL lessons learned will be presented and where the
instrument developed by the Community of Practice will be "validated". After
the Forum, the aim is to create a broader network of structural fund managers
and people concerned with designing and implementing policies for inclusive
entrepreneurship.
Developing the bigger picture
Shahamak Rezaei, assistant professor at the Roskilde University, brought the
debate back to the specific problems facing ethnic entrepreneurs in the Danish
Labour Market. According to his research, the income differential between
immigrants and native Danes actually increases at higher levels of education as
much of the formal education of ethnic minorities goes unrecognised and unused.
In fact, although the Danish Government has made major efforts to increase the
integration of ethnic minorities, a recent OECD report on The Labour Market
Integration of Immigrants in Denmark shows that there is still a large gap
between the labour market position of immigrants and native Danes.
Several investigations on ethnic minority entrepreneurship in Denmark have
also pin-pointed some of the main challenges they face. These include access to
bank loans and guarantees, the lack of a banking history, the knowledge of how
to prepare a formal business plan and of local business culture, laws and
regulations
In this context, Elisabeth Chaanhing, an ethnic Businesswoman, who studied to
be a nurse in China, provided a graphic example of how she had managed to break
through some of the barriers and gradually build up her restaurant business.
Proposals for the future
During the afternoon the discussion took place in three parallel workshops.
The first workshop on Entrepreneurship in deprived neighbourhoods was
lead by Dorthe Marie Degn from the EVU, with presentations from Ridha
Shimi, Business Advisor of the Odense Erhvervsråd (Odense Trade and Business
Council), one of the Danish EQUAL partners, and Sandra Lawrence, Senior Business
Advisor of ACCBA, an association of community business advisors promoted by the
EQUAL partners in the United Kingdom. ACCBA has developed an innovatory scheme
for providing recognised training to community workers from ethnic minority
organisations so that they can provide first stage business advice to the
members of their community. This helps to overcome the distrust that exists with
mainstream business support agencies and improves outreach and communication
into deprived communities.
Discussion on policy recommendations
The participants argued that business support in deprived areas should form
part of broader programmes for urban regeneration. A combination of outreach
business advice together with microfinance can be especially effective. But
individual support is often not enough to break the cycle of decline in many
deprived urban areas. It has to be backed up by concerted action to open up the
neighbourhoods and make them more attractive for external investors and
entrepreneurs. One way of doing this is by locating flagship projects such as
cultural centres, university departments, sports centres, and other public
buildings in the area.
The second workshop on Ethnic women entrepreneurs was chaired by
Tina Baghdadi, Nyvirk, Århus, with two presentations from Tina
Wilchen Christensen, an anthropologist from the consultancy HUMANCULTURE
and María Blanco from Barcelona Activa, the Spanish EQUAL lead partner. One of
the key points made here was that many ethnic women entrepreneurs need support
to create sustainable business networks. Various projects explained how they had
successfully built networks among ethnic women entrepreneurs and later connected
these with native business networks. These kinds of projects have to be long
term to have an effect, since it takes a lot of time to make networks
sustainable.
The workshop on Growth potential for ethnic business owners was
animated by Torben Rasmussen from the Odense Erhvervssråd with a presentation
from Jakob Stouman of his report on Successful Immigrant Entrepreneurs in
Copenhagen. He provided some examples of how immigrants can break out of
traditional low margin markets.
The working group came to three main conclusions. Firstly, there is a need to
improve access to guarantees, microfinance and shared capital. Secondly, more
attention should be paid to building an entrepreneurial spirit early on in the
educational system. Thirdly, even the smallest entrepreneurs deserve good
quality professional business advice. This should not be restricted exclusively
to high growth sectors.
"Visions
for an
inclusive entrepreneurship strategy", presentation by Peter Stub Jørgensen, director,
European Commision
Programme, reports, presentations:
www.buildingentrepreneurship.com
Top
