Boosting professionalisation of migrant entrepreneurs’ associations and diversity management

As part of the support that both UNITEE and EUROCHAMBRES, the EMEN partners leading the Community of Practice (CoP) 3 provides to their members, Mr Adem Kumcu (founder member of UNITEE) has implemented a 2-day training workshop in Paris hosted by the Federation of Franco-Turkish Entrepreneurs – FEDIF. A total of 19 people, mainly, Board members of business professional associations, have already benefited from this initiative.

The first day of training took place on 2nd December 2018 and consisted of a workshop on the migrant entrepreneurial ecosystem. During the second day, on 31st March 2019, the participants went through four workshops, each dedicated to a specific part of building a strategic plan.

The main lessons derived from these first trials, which were met with high satisfaction by the participants, were:

  • The more practical the training, the better: the theoretical part should be kept to a minimum and only to what is necessary;
  • The Board members and entrepreneurs participating to this kind of trainings should be guided through making a complete and thorough analysis of their current situation and the ecosystem they are working in;
  • A strong focus should be put on helping the participants to develop an implementable strategic plan for effective change management.

The curricula for these trainings was elaborated after having conducted a survey on professionalisation of migrant entrepreneurs’ associations, which aimed to understand the challenges faced by migrant associations in their professionalisation and sustainability efforts.

The survey saw the participation of 34 migrant entrepreneurs’ associations, located all around Europe in 7 countries and 12 different cities, and with a broad range of expertise.

In the coming months, the two co-leaders of CoP3 will continue organising other trainings of this kind, across nations and typologies of individuals. The results of these trials will help to define a final training package.

In particular, EUROCHAMBRES and UNITEE are working on creating a tool to assess the diversity management needs, practices and policies of Chambers of Commerce. The tool, based on the feedback received during the preliminary trainings, will take the form of a decision tree: its aim is to be an easy to use instrument to foster peer learning and the exchange of best practices. Such a tool is expected to be finalized in the coming months and will be made available for free on the website after the second yearly meeting in The Hague.

The final aim of the trainings, in their variety of formats, is to build synergies across migrant entrepreneurs’ associations and chambers of commerce, which can be used to persuade Chambers and organisations beyond CoP3 to join efforts and collaborate in supporting migrant entrepreneurs on the local, regional, national and European levels.

The CoP3 on Professionalisation and diversity management has gathered so far 28 members from local and national migrant entrepreneurs’ associations (with most of the members being part of UNITEE’s network), 6 support organisations and research centres and 11 Chambers of Commerce, amongst which a mix of national, regional and local Chambers of Commerce, with both groups together covering 11 countries and one region.

For more information visit our website https://www.emen-project.eu/ register in in the CoPs FORUM or contact Giovanni Collot (UNITEE) – gcollot@unitee.eu & Ana Sarateanu (EUROCHAMBERS) – sarateanu@eurochambres.eu

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