Connecting Cambridgeshire launched their new project to help women in business, start, expand or grow: Destination Digital Opportunities for Women.
The slides explain the free training, funding and support available to business women in Cambridgeshire until April 2014.
Further information available here: http://destinationdigital.info/opportunities-women/
9599632723 Top Call Girls in Delhi at your Door Step Available 24x7 Delhi
Presentation on Destination Digital Opportunities for Women launch 2014
1. Destination Digital Opportunities for
Women
“The internet allowed me to take £600 and start a company that
now sells to 120 countries around the world generating a turnover
of over £1million a month. However, it seems that organisations
and individuals are still to realise the opportunity that sits in front
of them on their desk. Online was the way we engaged and got
traction quickly. It gave me the ability to reach, literally from my
own home, the whole world. ”
Julie Deane
Founder and CEO
The Cambridge Satchel Company
3. Agenda
• Destination Digital for Women Liz Stevenson
Digital Manager, Connecting
Cambridgeshire
• Training Opportunities for Women Hawa Sydique
Enterprising Women
• Business Networks Challenge Fund Nicola Graves
Project Manager, Connecting
Cambridgeshire
• Questions and close
7. £1million challenge fund
• Opportunities to expand
or set-up new
businesses.
• Help women to develop
their digital skills to start
afresh or return to work
• Support women to
develop digital know-how
and confidence to fully
benefit from it.
8. • In Cambridgeshire and Peterborough there
is high labour market demand for people
with NVQ level 3 and above skills levels.
• There is a significant risk that the workless
population do not have the skills required by
the local businesses seeking to grow.
Source: Cambridgeshire Economic Assessment, 2013.
9. Local women are successful, so let’s help
them…
• At the last time
measured, East of
England had the
second-highest level
of female early-stage
entrepreneurial activity
in the UK.
Source: 2009 Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM)
Male and female total early-stage
entrepreneurial activity in
the UK regions, 2009
14. “It was such a warm and
welcoming group of
entrepreneurs in so many different
business areas, very inspiring for me
as I'm just at the idea stage of
starting my own business and
everyone there were so helpful
and encouraging.”
I especially appreciate the structure of
the meetings which not only gives an
opportunity to network effectively but also to
get some valuable advice and information
which helps to develop yourself and your
business.”
“All they are really interested in is supporting
women, helping women accelerate both their
entrepreneurial and business growth...”
15. Destination Digital Women
• Support and empower women
– start or grow business
– return to employment
– work from home
• Delivery through workshops and networking
events
• Community Opportunities
16. Workshops
• Female small office-home office (SOHO)
workers
• Digital Marketing
• Women returners
17. When and Where?
Events will take place in Cambridgeshire:
• Cambridge City
• East Cambs
• Fenland
• Huntingdonshire
• South Cambs
• Peterborough
22. Fund Objectives
• Drive broadband take-up
• Increase women’s technology skills
• Enable new women-led businesses to
start-up
23. Funding
Up to £4,000 per business network
2 application Windows:
1st Nov – 12th Dec 2014
1st Jan – 13th Feb 2015
Short application form
Assessment & Panel decision
24. Objectives
• Increase confidence & technology skills
• Support creation of new businesses
• Encourage take-up of faster broadband
• Grow & diversify existing businesses
For women & women-led businesses
The wider programme
Many people associate Connecting Cambridgeshire with the broadband infrastructure roll-out across Cambridgeshire and Peterborough.
But the wider programme covers three areas of work, including a range of partnership projects supported by Government and European funding, which touch upon many of the challenges faced by local authorities. These workstreams support the overarching aims of the digital programme and touch upon many areas of work across local authorities so that we can:
support and maintain Cambridgeshire’s positions as one of the most resilient economics in the UK
reduce levels of inequality, social isolation and digital exclusion and improve health and well being
helping to solve complex or “wicked” problems such as traffic congestion, increasing care costs of an elderly population and environmental challenges.
accelerate people’s participation online and transform public services.
Digital Infrastructure Delivery is enhancing connectivity through the roll-out of a fixed superfast broadband infrastructure for areas without commercial coverage, and initiatives to support Wi-Fi, better mobile voice and data connectivity, including 4G services.
Projects include: Superfast Broadband Roll-out programme; Superfast Extension Funding; Super Connected Cities WiFi delivery; national Mobile Infrastructure Programme (MIP), exploiting Cambridgeshire Public Service Network; and technology trials for better mobile coverage.
Progress: The fibre broadband roll-out is well underway across the county, allowing over 40,000 premises to upgrade to superfast speeds Take-up of superfast broadband is higher in Cambridgeshire than the national average
Exploiting Digital is about maximizing digital opportunities through faster connectivity and support to help businesses grow and create jobs, and improving people’s digital skills to help them get online and make it easier to access public services.
Cambridgeshire is one of the UK's fastest growing and most innovative counties contributing billions to the economy. We want to ensure our businesses can fully exploit technology to go on growing and compete globally
Projects include: Destination Digital grants and free business consultancy, connection vouchers and now Destination Digital for women.
This also includes Superfast broadband demand stimulation and take-up and creating a Digital Inclusion Strategy to ensure inclusion activities target areas of greatest digital exclusion.
Progress: Destination Digital has already helped more than 400 small businesses with grants and free business support and advice.
Future Digital is exploring how leading technology innovation and open data sharing can help to reduce the cost of public services and provide solutions to the growth challenges faced by Cambridgeshire, including digital connectivity for new developments.
Projects include: Digital Strategy for Cambridgeshire; mobile voice and data coverage; ensuring infrastructure for new homes and communities; Cambridge digital test bed; Open Data strategy, future public service.
Find out more at www.connectingcambridgeshire.co.uk and www.destinationdigital.info
<number>
Better broadband and digital technology can help grow your business and our region’s economy.
Being online helps businesses to attract and interact with more customers, reach wider markets, reduce costs and increase sales. But a staggering 36% of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the UK have no website (according to a study by Go On UK/Lloyds Bank, 2012)
<number>
<number>
Under the current trajectory of growth, the economy is likely to require as a minimum 745,000 additional workers with digital skills over the 2013-2017 period (i.e. an average of nearly 150,000 per annum). Of these, we estimate that between 169,000 and 182,000 jobs could be captured by young people (aged 25 or under) entering the workforce for the first time or retraining from other roles.
Digital skills are defined as the attributes that allow individuals and businesses both to use digital equipment and to access, create or share digital information via the internet and thereby benefit from opportunities in the modern economy.
Funded by the Government Equalities Office’s Women and Broadband Challenge Fund, supports actions to encourage women’s enterprise in areas where Superfast Broadband is being deployed; building on the investment in broadband by supporting women to develop the digital know-how and confidence to fully benefit from it.
The programme activities will enable us to better support women’s requirements – tailoring training materials, delivering bespoke advice and sessions for women entrepreneurs and returners which address their particular concerns.
<number>
The Destination Digital Women programme provides an opportunity for women-led businesses and potential female entrepreneurs to take advantage of faster broadband to expand or set-up new businesses, including home-based.
All businesses need to be digital businesses these days yet a considerable number are not keeping pace with digital development:
Online development has remained static for approximately 1.65 million SMEs.
Three in ten SMEs use the internet less frequently than once a day.
Over a third of SMEs do not have a website.
A fifth do not currently feel the Internet is important to their organisation.
Only around a third have a website with the functionality for customers to purchase products or services online.
(Source: Britain’s Digital Opportunity 2012)
<number>
The House of Commons Science and Technology Committee published their report on ‘Women in scientific careers’ on 6 Feb 2014. The Committee explains that the UK economy needs more skilled scientists and engineers. To meet this need more women will need to be retained in STEM careers. The Government currently focuses on inspiring young girls to choose a STEM career. However, although this may increase the input, this does not stop women from gradually disappearing higher up the career ladder, the so-called ‘leaky pipeline’.
Returning, starting again and growing digital skills are all important if women are to be able to take advantage of the economy’s digital opportunities.
<number>
Leaning in…
The 2009 Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) report regarded the East of England as one of the most entrepreneurial regions in the UK, with a particularly high rate of business start-ups among people aged between 18 to 24 and women.
The East of England had the second highest total early-stage entrepreneurial activity rate in the UK, at around 6.9% of the adult population aged 18-64 compared to the UK average of 5.8%
The East of England had the second highest level of female early-stage entrepreneurial activity in 2009 at 4.7%. Male early-stage entrepreneurial activity was third highest at 9.1%
The Women’s Business Council: findings and recommendations on enterprise (June 2013) found that:
equalising labour force participation rates of men and women, could increase economic growth by 0.5% per year, with a potential gain of 10% of GDP by 2030;
there are over 2.4 million women who are not in work but want to work, and over 1.3 million women who want to work more hours.
The GEM 2013 Women’s Report further found that women are more likely to say that fear of failure is a barrier to enterprise than men. Just over two fifths of women (46.4 per cent) said fear of failure would stop them from starting a business compared with a third (40.5 per cent) of men.
<number>
The programme activities:
Provide additional resources through grants and a challenge fund for business networks which support women, so that they can better support women in digital businesses.
Provide training, support and taster sessions to encourage women to start or grow their business, return to employment or work from home.
Deliver a range of activities which will develop their technology skills.
Connect women business leaders and business networks with STEM careers advocates to promote the benefits of science, technology, engineering and maths NVQ level 3 skills to young women 9-19 years old through work experience.
<number>
<number>
<number>
<number>
The aim of the Challenge Fund is to build on the investment in broadband by supporting women to develop the digital know how and confidence to fully benefit from it.
Activity will be delivered by local business networks.
Funding is revenue not capital and as such is not for the purchase of IT equipment. Businesses seeking support to purchase equipment should approach the Destination Digital grants scheme, details of which can be found at www.destinationdigital.info
For example:
Women’s business clubs in rural community settings such as village halls to inspire women to seize the opportunity presented by faster broadband to set up or grow existing businesses. Clubs would assist women to build or refresh digital skills and provide a source of peer to peer support.
The establishment of a network of mentors from the local business community who have started up online businesses to inspire and support women to take advantage of faster broadband to pursue business ideas.
Support, information and workshops to provide women who run SOHO businesses (small office/ home office) with local opportunities to increase digital confidence and access co-working networks to provide on-going support.
Business support programmes for women to build digital expertise and skills so they can exploit the business benefits of faster broadband
Digital Women’s Forums to provide family and women friendly business events and networking opportunities that take account of women’s need to balance work and family life.
Before we move into the Q&A I’d like to highlight some of the businesses who pre-registered their interest and who we have already started to work with:
I’d also like to invite Michael Moody, Managing Director of SolCamb to briefly outline what our support will do for his business. Michael was among the first to register his interest in Destination Digital and has already met with one of the advisers to discuss how he can improve his business plan and help other small businesses to make the most of digital technologies
<number>
For the latest updates, please follow #destinationdigital on Twitter. You can also find out about Connecting Cambridgeshire by following @ConnectingCambs
We have just started a new group on Linked In to discuss the scheme, so please join and tell us your needs: Linkd.in/1dTYerD
All the latest information will also be available on our website: www.destinationdigital.info
<number>