The Impact of the AWE Programme on women entrepreneurs in France and the UK

The Accelerating Women’s Enterprise (AWE) project, funded by the European Regional

Development Fund (ERDF), was launched in 2019 and aimed to support disadvantaged women

entrepreneurs to create and launch their enterprises. By doing so, the AWE programme intended

to address the gender imbalance in enterprise start-ups in the cross-channel region and to

alleviate the structural barriers experienced by disadvantaged women entrepreneurs in their

entrepreneurial journey.

To achieve its objectives, the project has been divided into two phases: the first phase took place

from 2019-2022 and then Phase 2 from 2022 to 2023.

This report outlines the impact of the programme on participants (from all phases of the project),

based on the responses of 70 participants both in France and in the UK (40 responses to the

impact analysis survey and 30 semi-structured interviews). Most of the participants reported a

high level of satisfaction with their participation in the AWE programme and mentioned several

benefits for their entrepreneurial journey, including:

• Peer-to-peer support
• Increased technical knowledge and skills to scale-up their businesses (human capital)
• Extending their social networks as well as their market and customer opportunities (social capital)
• Building their confidence and their sense of accomplishment (psychological capital)

The participants also provided insights regarding the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on their

businesses and entrepreneurial journey, as the outbreak occurred during the delivery of the AWE

programme. They highlight the key role of digitalisation in their support and coping strategies

during the COVID-19 lockdowns which continues to remain an importance facet even when

there has been a resumption of onsite face-to-face training.

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Finally, from the findings, we make the following recommendations to improve and enhance future programmes like AWE and their positive impact on disadvantaged women entrepreneurs:

To adopt a holistic approach combining both ‘hard’ technical skill-oriented training and gender-specific ‘soft’ skills training. To offer tailored support to disadvantaged women entrepreneurs’ specific needs and time commitment. To offer consistent support over time and specific to the stage of business development. To apply a gender lens to curriculum and delivery of programmes to support women entrepreneurs, and to evaluate the programme in support of women entrepreneurs.