Gender-Smart Entrepreneurship Education & Training +

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced small business support organizations and educational institutions to re-think how they deliver entrepreneurship education and training. The unprecedented transition to online delivery methods presents an opportunity to create more inclusive entrepreneurship courses, programs and small business support services.

Authored by Dr. Barbara Orser and Dr. Catherine Elliott, Gender-Smart Entrepreneurship Education & Training Plus (GEET+) presents a toolkit of resources to support inclusive entrepreneurship education and training. Telfer faculty are also collaborating with global knowledge partners, such as Women’s Economic Initiative and the Global Business School Network, to adopt insights from this ground-breaking report and strengthen the design and delivery of entrepreneurship courses and programs.

Women entrepreneurs make significant contributions to economic growth, wealth creation, innovation and employment. Yet, their participation is constrained by structural impediments and biases, including within entrepreneurial ecosystems. 

The GEET+ Action Strategy incorporates Gender-Smart Entrepreneurship Education & Training evidence-based insights to construct inclusive entrepreneurial ecosystems as drivers for the economic empowerment of girls, women and other disadvantaged groups.

Led by the Women’s Economic Imperative (WEI) with funding from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC, Canada), the GEET+ Action Strategy pilot project has been launched to adapt, test and refine the GEET+ scorecard in Peru, Mexico, Kenya and Nigeria.


  1. Enhance the effectiveness of support services by addressing biases in solution design and sector knowledge about equity, diversity and inclusion.
  2. Create pathways for women to build and scale enterprises
  3. Support efforts to build pipelines of scalable, viable and bankable women-owned/led SMEs
  4. Re-constitute entrepreneurial eco-system supports that meet the needs of diverse women

Download the GEET+ Report to learn about practices to learn about inclusive entrepreneurship education and training



The Community of Practice


The GEET+ Action Strategy incorporates Gender-Smart Entrepreneurship Education & Training evidence-based insights to construct inclusive entrepreneurial ecosystems as drivers for the economic empowerment of girls, women and other disadvantaged groups.

Led by the Women’s Economic Imperative (WEI) with funding from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC, Canada), the GEET+ Action Strategy pilot project has been launched to adapt, test and refine the GEET+ scorecard in Peru, Mexico, Kenya and Nigeria.

The Community of Practice will collaborate to strengthen the design and delivery of entrepreneurship education and training courses and programs to reduce gender, racial and occupational stereotypes and unconscious biases associated with entrepreneurship.

The pilot project will document barriers to inclusion at the organizational, program and course levels with respect to demonstrated commitment to equity, diversity and inclusion within EET intermediaries. The objectives of the GEET+ Project are to:


Enhance awareness and effectiveness of EET supports within universities by addressing gender, occupational and other biases in solution design

Refine measures and assessment criteria to support gender equality in EET. Entrepreneurship Education and Training (EET)

Facilitate EET knowledge sharing among academic, industry, non-governmental and government stakeholders including to catalyze networks where they do not already exist.

Strengthen pathways for women to build and scale enterprises. Strengthen pathways for women to build and scale enterprises, including efforts to strengthen pipelines of viable and bankable women-owned and led SMEs


Partners


Events

Gender Entrepreneurship Education and Training Plus: Building Entrepreneurial Ecosystems to Support Underserved Entrepreneurs

On March 23, 2021, this round table launched the Gender Entrepreneurship Education and Training Plus (GEET +), a multi-country project that mobilizes evidence-based insights in the development of entrepreneurship education and training as drivers of economic empowerment of girls, women, and other disadvantageous groups.

You can now watch the event highlights to learn more about the GEET+ action strategy:

The GEET + is the work of Telfer School of Management’s Professors Barbara Orser and Catherine Elliott.

Led by The Women’s Economic Imperative and funded by the International Development Research Centre (Canada), the pilot project is being launched in Peru, Mexico, Kenya, and Nigeria.

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