On 12^th and 13^th of October, the 2^nd WEgate Training Academy was held. More than 50 participants, women entrepreneurs and women entrepreneurship organizations, from all over Europe, had the opportunity to learn from the distinguished trainers and from each other during the training and networking sessions. The Academy was dedicated to the importance of learning new skills and knowledge, related to 21^st century – digital skills and circular economy concepts, on one hand, and the importance of the old skills and knowledge such as financing literacy and financing opportunities, as importance for the businesses development, regardless of the size.

The Academy was launched with commencement motivational speeches by Ms. Dana Adriana Puia Morel, representative from the European Commission, DG GROW and Ms. Eva Merloni, WEgate project manager, where their shared more on the importance of supporting women entrepreneurship and future plans of the WEgate project.

The first module, Digital literacy, delivered by Ms. Candyce Costa, a Digital Marketing Consultant specialized in B2B content and social media engagement and the Founder and Chief Disruptor at Female Tech Leaders Magazine, elaborated the importance of the online presence in the todays’ world, as an essential asset, regardless if you want to thrive in your professional or personal life. Valuable practical themes were covered, such as: expanding online visibility, creating targeted e-mail marketing strategy, running a business blog, making SEO a priority and increasing activity on social media. As Ms. Costa concluded: “Self-promotion is important! – people buy from people!”. She gave practical advice on how should entrepreneurs make themselves, their personal skills and their businesses visible and easily reachable online, work on their promotion, towards expanding their success.

The module financial literacy was delivered by Mr. Thomas Cooney, Professor of Entrepreneurship at the Technological University Dublin, Director of the Institute for Minority Entrepreneurship and Adjunct Professor at the University of Turku (Finland). He emphasized the importance of financial literacy for women entrepreneurs, how critically important is to dashboard monthly figures such as sales, costs, profit, cash in bank and debtors and educating themselves in managing finances. “Not everyone is expected to be an accountant, but it is form utmost importance that entrepreneurs should be able to understand the basics of finance.”

Vojtech Vosecky, a leading expert in the field of circular economy in the Central and Eastern European region delivered the module Circular economy. Promoting a world without a waste, lowering climate changes and pollution, the concept of circular economy is the future of businesses. It does not only care for our environment and the future of the planet, but it showed the potential for businesses in revenue and creation job places. Advices on how the concept of circular economy can be implemented within businesses were shared. “Circular economy can produce even greater economic results than the regular linear economy. There are many good initiatives already taking place, and circular economy as the holistic approach to lifestyles and mind-sets is gaining even larger momentum as we speak.”

The second day, started with the module funding opportunities, presented by Anamaria Magri Pantea is the founder and Managing Consultant of Ascend Consulting. The module consisted of opportunities for funding related to women entrepreneurs and for women supporting organizations. She gave thorough insight into each particular scheme and elaborated the feasibility of its usage for various types of funding, since women entrepreneurs continuously lack financing. As she stated: “There are funds available out there, check them out, see which one is feasible for you, learn to prepare a proper application and be mindful about application details.”

She was followed by the first panel titled “Why digital tools for access to finance are a crucial to master for women entrepreneurs” was Lin-Na Zhang, Operations & Marketing Director for LITA.co., moderated by Ms. Claire Munck. It showed the participants that investment world is changing into ever more mindful and impact-based investments, done through digital platforms. Thus, such investing creates added value for socially responsible economy in general and provides positive impacts for the economic developments of the societies benefiting from such initiatives.

The second panel of the day was with Anne Lebreton-Wolf, titled “The A-Z of fundraising”, moderated by Jan Debets, gave insight on what it means to be investment ready, explaining the funds available at each stage of entrepreneurial life cycle.

The 2^nd WEGate Training Academy was a wonderful opportunity for participants to learn new knowledge with respect to digital skills, impact-investing, funding possibilities and circular economy and also to remind themselves of the old wisdom which is more than even important in the 21^st century – that of knowing finances and getting back to the wisdom of our grandparents with respect to usage of scarce natural resources (reuse-repair-recycle, i.e. nothing is waste per se, everything can be used for some other purpose). Thus, reconfirming the old adage expressed by the late CEO of the Southwest Airlines, Herb Kelleher, who, when speaking about their own efforts in creating a sustainable business, said that the (sustainable) businesses should be built incorporating in themselves the sense of historicity and sense of futurity.